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•X 



THE AMARANTH and the BERYL 



n 3an^tn0viatn 



MY BROTHER 



COPYRIGHT BY 

WILLARD FRACKER & COMPANY 

1889 



There 's a voice that wakes for me 
Thoughts so mortal to my tongue. 

That my heart but silently 
Bows, and leaves the song unsung. 

There 's a precept dropt from heaven 
To my pillow, and 't is mine 

Not for spoken truth, but dearer. 
All unspoken 'neath the line. 



Y 



O 






CONTENTS. 



THE AMARANTH AND THE BERYL . . 15 

MINABEL . .... 45 

THE TRUTH-GOD ..... 89 

UNTITLED LYRICS AND SONNETS . . .171 

ZOROASTER ...... 211 



The Amaranth and the Beryl 



Inland Sea of Japan. — 1883. 



An Elegy it 



©h* ^tnairnnth ixvCt:t X\x^ ^zxij^Xx 



AN ELEGY. 



I. 

Another star swoons on the horizon — 

A glory nevermore ! Oh weep with me ; 
For if a brother's love thy life hath known, 

Be thou a bead of my heart's rosary 
O'er which I bend and pray. Let us condole, 

Waking from death a tribute pure and free : 
One co-eternal hymn. And thou, my soul— 

Grief-nurtured orphan of fatality — 
Arise and kiss this dust to heaven, and toll 
Thy silver psalmody, bidding it Godward roll. 

II. 

Ah, Death now lives, and Joy in us is dead ; 
The leprous cross sweeps that marmoreal 

brow. 
And Memory drooping bows her anguished 

head 



1 6 The Amaranth and the Beryl 

Upon that bosom one with Nature now. 
O realmless Parent ! here thy son lays down 
This staff called 'Life,' we know not why, 
nor how, 
Nor whence it came, nor whether it be crown 
Or cross ; but here it lies — shattered ! and 
thou 
Pale Earth, still kneeling in thy druid gown. 
These precious vigils keep, lighting his dear 
renown ! 

III. 

His heart throbbed in the bosom of a cloud 
That rained sweet health o'er Nature's 
parched tongue ; 
Yet to be man to man was he as proud 

As to be hero for their weal. That young 
And soldierly discretion loved the deed 

For the deed's holy doing, whether wrung 
From bitterness or joy. He found a creed 

In the great heart of man — a hymn unsung, 
A scripture wordless, yet of speech indeed 
Profound and godike both in triumph and in 
need. 

IV. 

And he is ours to joy beside no more ; 

Oh prostrate season when our Summer fled! 
That warrior will is beckoned to the shore 

To join the Truth-gods' council of the dead. 



An Elegy 17 

A star pavilion o'er his chariot falls, 
The nightly galaxies before him led ; 
The noisesome yokes of mortal travail calls 
In the dim wakes of Love long vanquished, 
While Saturn-like on through these widowed 
halls. 
Sorrow plods forth, masking the Hours in 
funeral palls. 

V. 

All that was Beauty-born of earth or skies. 

All goodness though the lowly and unsought, 
All that was feeling to his thankful eyes 

His gospel was ; for fashioning to thought 
This fair God-quality, there moved in him 

A power that rose to life that men be brought 
To honor truer truth ; and through the dim 

Estangement of our mortal means, be taught 
The creed of charity ; then at the rim 
Of death he drank of life with godhood at the 
brim. 

VI. 

Love writes with her own tears his epitaph 
Upon the forehead of a lifting fame 

Too holy not to prove of heaven half — 
To pure not to give purity a name 

More true than language, which these zones 
of toil 
Still as a watchword to their empires claim. 



1 8 The Amaranth and the Beryl 

From her bowed heart Affection pours the oil 

Into the censer's lips, and with the flame 
Of plumed suns 't is lit, and coil on coil 
The smokes pray God ward up, up from this 
seat of spoil. 

VII. 

A single meteor was at his side 
Pathing his course through heaven ! Aye, 
from the sun 
Of druid Even to the early bride 

Of young Morn's minister his race was run 
Like some grave seer ; and at his touch of light 

In a melodious splendor there was won 
From grief a gospel to this eremite 
Of Love's large discourse. Lo ! Oblivion 
Bearded, and by this child who snatched from 
Night 
Her sceptre, and from Death a tribute pure 
and bright. 

VIII. 

The forest and the glen-nursed mountain 
streams 
Encircling this ambrosial couch of thought : 
The night-lorn caverns where the hermit 
dreams, 
The bastioned vales where solitude is sought : 
These are the keeps unchallenged of the blade. 
The courts of eld where sylvan gods have 
wrought 



An Elegy 19 

Huge images, and where he found them laid. 
And here he lived and loved ; and here was 
taught 
The dignity of manhood, and was made 
One with the oracle that cannot pale nor fade. 

IX. 

The tranced chalice lies ravished of wine — 

That morning vintage of Arcadian vales ; 
And there Love lifts her chaplet most divine. 

And Music rears her wild young nightingales. 
Upon the magic of that Titan morn 

He came, as some sky-pilgrim that regales 
The crouching earth, unteaching it of scorn. 

Touching the pulse of Truth till it exhales 
A balm to ease mankind ; while error-torn 
And bruised Hope up, up from her dead self 
is borne. 

X. 

Mute are the praying streams that kisssd his 

feet, — 
The air hangs pond'rous with some vital awe ; 
Sad Nature listens to her own heart's beat, 
While round this fane the ruth-browed ves- 
tals draw. 
Oh say 't is not unworthy them to throng ; 
But weep with them, and let thy hot tears 
thaw 



20 The Amaranth and the Beryl 

This icy chain binding Love to her wrong 

In this o'er-earnest grief that seems to gnaw 

Deep to the heart of heaven, turning its strong 

And staid magnificence to vigils of sweet song. 

XL 

Youth leers at Death, smiling the sceptic's 
smile. 
That grave-calm following hard the taper's 
glow 
Snuffed of the poisoned Wind, awes not awhile 

These veins with red ambitions overflow. 
Starward ascendant still, he scorns to know 
That time shall chill these passions till they 
grow 
All starved and stagnant with the wintry years. 

Youth is all immortality ; for lo ! 
These repetends of triumphs fed with tears, 
Find death a merest name through which the 
God appears. 

XII. 

Thus from the hemlock of the Spoiler's reed 
Our loved one's fame distils a splendor. Aye, 

From out the night-shades of the past where 

bleed 
These memories, there rises a new day 

Of godlier argument through which appears 
The proof of that which shall not pass away. 



An Elegy 21 

Truth bless the hour that gathered many 
tears — 
Fixing each drop a throbbing star ; and may 
That name grow hallowed with the memoried 
years — 
In God, a man : a fame greater than king's or 
seer's. 



II. 



Lo ! the clouds are rolled away 
From the sepulchre of the sky 

I behold the light of day — 
Of the Day that shall not die. 



Lo! the stone is rolled away 

From the sepulchre of my heart ; 

I behold the Light and say: 
Love! live on; my creed thou art. 



2 2 The Amaranth and the Beryl 



III. 

I made my couch of yew-boughs 

Beside Apollo's water ; 
And there spake I my love-vows 

With Truth's all-sovereign daughter : 
And as she bent those pale brows, 

I listened what bethought her. 

Oh in what golden vesture 

Those virgin dreams enwound me ; 
What Fames made quickening gesture 

From eager nooks around me ; 
I murmured * I, your guest — your 

Child-hope — I have found thee !' 

And ah, my wish was golden 

In promptings for mankind : 
Brave words that should embolden 

The purpose of young mind : — 
With man to man beholden 

More true, brave and refined. 

Then by that priestly glenwood 
Truth scorned the dogged clan 

Who stand where their dead sires stood 
Kissing Oblivion ; 

For if to dare be manhood 
Who dares not be a man ? 



An Elegy 23 



IV. 



I woke in the mid-glooms of night, 
Medreamt my faith was dead ; 

My soul's lost heaven had hung curse 
About my cursed head. 

For I had pondered long, long years, 
And wond'ringly had weighed 

The Why of living, when I should 
Have knelt me down and prayed. 

The curse of Cain hung there betwixt 

The Past and the To-be ; 
Philosophy was halt and dumb, 

Christ's tears — thy wildered me. 

And I saw Death : a tongue that swung 

From heaven as in a bell ; 
And when it tolled a spirit rolled 

Down, down the grip of hell. 

And I saw Time : much like a snake 
With eyes wide — ah, so wide ; 

And even while it blinked, one more 
Sweet babe grew old and died. 

And I saw Wisdom bowed austere, 

And I saw Folly too ; 
But where the line betwixt them lay, 

Not e'en the wisest knew. 



24 The Amaranth and the Beryl 

And poets and philosophers 

Who read man's heart so well ; 
But what they knew and what they guessed 

Were wide as heaven from hell. 

And I saw Hope — ah, melting thing 

With censers in her eyes ; 
But they soon died and proved that Hope 

Was Death in fair disguise. 

And I saw youth with wonder-look, 

And sword poised full in air ; 
But ere it fell and conquered hell, 

He stood a greybeard there. 

And meekest saints and prophets — ah, 

Bold seekers for the true ; 
They pondered, prayed and hoped for truth. 

But truth not one soul knew. 

And I saw Vice and Innocence — 

Twin-born, twin-featured, they ; 
But which was Innocence and which 

Was Vice, not one dared say. 

And young Endeavor dreaming dreams — 
Mad dreams, gods' dreams for man ; 

But where a godlike dream did end, 
A godlike deed began. 



An Elegy 25 

1 heard a voice — a wonder-voice 

From lieaven, or up from hell ; 
But whether 'twas voice of gods or fiends, 

Not even a saint could tell. 

Then honest Effort — though with eyes 

On heaven — chained to the sod ; 
But he rent twain the coward's chain, 

Struck, and became a god. 

And I saw Friendship, with two hands 

Outstretched so pleadingly ; 
And while the right cried, ' Hail, sweet 
friend!' 

The left hand said, * Good bye !' 

And I saw Truth, and I saw False : 

There side by side they grew ; 
And yet men called the true the false. 

And swore the false the true. 

And I saw all mankind "cry out, 
* Whence are we ? — whither ? — why ? * 

Then with the hot words at their lips. 
Lay sidelong down and die. 

And I saw saints, and devils too :' 
Men thought they knew them well ; 

And yet they cried the fiend to heaven, 
And cast the saint in hell. 



26 The Amaranth and the Beryl 

And I saw sages wide-browed too, 
Wiih pouch, and quill, and staff ; 

But their wild words of wisdom broke 
Into a madman's laugh. 

'What know'st thou then, O man ? — what 
prov'st ? — 

Whom judgest thou ?' I cried ; 
There was but one who knew the truth, 

And him ye crucified.' 

Then I saw Faith — ah, thing of peace. 

Of promise and repose ; 
And in her warm outstretched palms 

I buried my dead woes. 

Aye, buried them deep beyond my sight: 
These griefs with trust outshone ; 

Then I. took up my soldier's staff. 
And cried, ' On, coward, on !' 



An Elegy 27 



V. 

Ah, Love, mak'st thou death bitter ? — is 't 
thy seals 
God-broke that proves the dear thrice dear, 
With yet the shroud, the pall, the bier. 

Mere playthings to the faith that feels? 

And Death, prov'st thou Love's first philos- 
ophy — 
And parting but the iron pledge 
That Day brought forth for Night to wedge 

The Past from God's assured To be ? 

Oh teach me, Thoa that dost create and know 
The purpose of these random ways. 
Why were these bright God-kissing days 

Denied him — him who loved them so ? 

Why were they nurtured of that lifting weal 
Which here but proves — alas ! too true — 
These blessed whiles but deeper drew 

Our love o'er wounds that would not heal. 

O man of deeds, how hero-like thy mien 
Bold through the prism of our tears ! 
Death's reason this : that man appears 

Himself but with a grave between. 



28 The Amaranth and the Beryl 

Death's reason this : that dead to men thou art 
Till born and cradled in the grave ; 
Only the listening God that gave 

And takes again, can search the heart. 

Only the God that gave and takes again 
Can understand thy life as thou ; 
Christ with a cross may mark thy brow, 

Which men shall swear the curse of Cain. 

Death's reason this : that could we truly know 
Our brothers as we dare believe, 
This bittern world would cease to grieve, 

And Peace make homes where now lives Woe. 



An Elegy 29 



VL 



Tell me, Seeker for the true, 

Who first pierced the darkness through? — 

Was it Faith, or Creed, or Fact : 

Man to think or man to act ? 
Who first thought these thoughts for you, 
Nature-lover, tell me, who ? 

Tell me, Rhapsodist of Light, 

Whither lead'st thou through the night ? — 

Is man's mission but to-day, 

Or with Truth coeval, say ? 
Prophet is he for the right, 
Or dumb Nature's parasite ? 

Tell me, Speaker of the Word, 

Is thy tongue a psalm or sword ? — 
Is thy purpose one with Truth, — 
Age to age, and youth to youth ? 

Hast thou one dead spirit stirred, 

Or shalt thou too die unheard? 

Tell me, Doer of the Deed, 
Do men fight for thee and bleed 
That a laurel kiss thy brow. 
Or is peace thy watchword now ? 
Right or Might — which is thy need ? — 
God a truth, or some mere creed ? 



30 The Amaranth and the Beryl 

Tell me, Son of battle lore, 

Must we purchase Peace with war? — 
Is the coin of all mankind 
Love or hate — the heart or mind ? 

Art thou not a slave, and more — 

Coward though a conqueror? 

Tell me, God of the Unseen, 

What this creed called 'Life' may mean?- 
Whither, whence, and why, this strange 
Anomaly of Death and Change ? 

Is man god, or thing unclean ? — 

Soul inspired, or mere machine ? 

Tell me. Soul of Beauty, say. 
Must this pageant pass away ? — 
All this loveliness we love 
But our own heart-madness prove ? 
Say not so ! but better far. 
All things for Love's purpose are. 



An Elegy o 



VII. 



Son of hymeneal Day! 

Thou perjurer of Time : 
Up, up, to thy mission, — away! 
Thy indolence is crime. 
Why cringe and toy thy talents to the base,— 

Dumb effigy of their dead thought 
Who are snail-tongued and hearted, when 't is 
taught 

There face to face 
With patriarchs and prophets is thy place; 

Counciled at heart 
With seers of sects and eras, at whose mace 

These master-births of art 
Leap to the vaulting noon, and in this prime 
'T is thine to rule alway? 

Son of the hero's Day! — 

Thou temple built of tears : 
How wanes thy faith away 
In these unhallowed spheres 
Of doubt and dareless paltroon-drugged sleep 
Called * Custom,' — crushing down the 
power 
God-given thee on that most signal hour 
When thou wert born to deep 
And solemn heritage : bidden to weep 
With weeping Love, 



32 The Amaranth and the Beryl 

And joy with those who joy. Ah, holy keep 

This birthright from above, 
To serve thee beacon through the long, long 

years, 

West-waging manfully. 

Son of ascendant Day! — 

Knight of the Prophet's sword : 
Take up thy stafif and say, 
* Truth be my sovereign lord!' 
And as thy sires took empire by the stroke 

Of man — not mammon, do thou more : 
Conquer thyself ; then take to heart the lore 

Of states and kings whose yoke 
Hath fallen to decay. Their rigorous cloak 

Of power and prime 
Descend upon thee, and the gods invoke 

This common weal, that Time 
Cool not thy passion to see Truth restored 
To thinking man for aye. 

Son of triumphant Day! — 

Press not thy couch this night; 

But where thy head would lay, 

There trim thy taper bright. 

And make young Morning blush so late is she. 

And there shall kneel swift angel visitants 

Thy couch about, and with rich utterance 



Pour moulten truth in thy dead ears ; 
And unto thee 
The maiden Triumphs shall espoused be, 
Keeping thee young in years 
That shall in beauty grow. 
Son of young Day! — 
A wound on Nature bleeds till by thy free 

Brave-bred authority 
'T is healed ; then may'st thou steal the light 

Of her dark eyes in turn, 
Lighting thy lamp of search that shall outburn 
The stars ; and by Nature honored so, 
Be thou her priest for aye ! 



34 The Amaranth and the Beryl 



VIII. 

Love ! I looked in thy two eyes — 

Like twin visions hid in tears — 
Two lamps in a house of mourning, 

Two souls through the gulf of years; 
But my spirit caught a reason 

From this bitterness of thine : 
Grief is oft' but the refinement 

Of Affection proved divine. 

Love ! I looked in Nature's eyes : 

There methinks were tear-drops too — 
Prisms for the better reading 

Of the mortal good and true. 
Lenses for enlarging purpose, 

Magnifying little deeds 
To the proof that man's big heart-throb 

Is the reach whence God proceeds. 

Love ! I looked e'en in Death's eyes : 

Dreamst thou that no tears were there ? 
Little suns of peace and promise 

That shall make the morrow fair? — 
Diamond beacons on the eyelids 

Of the great Undreamt beyond — 
Vigils to the Godward spirit 

That hath broke this mortal bond. 



An Elegy 35 

Love ! I looked in Faith's warm eyes : 

Through tears only can Faith see — 
Two bright heavens with a Jordan 

'Tvvixt that crystal look and me ; 
Two bright certitudes of Nature — 

Truth in both the great and small; 
Simply man with eyes on duty, 

Simply love his all in all. 



36 The Amaranth and the Beryl 



IX. 



The lyre-strings of my youth vibrate once more, 
Waking the dead Days' prophet! 
While in one yielding tribute these fair 
dreams 
Like incense out of Tophet, 
Outreach my soul that in wild music seems 
To take up throne in heaven. Lo ! before 

This snowy synod of tlie gods' lode-star — 
E'en at the threshold of this Court of Light — 

Ascend all kneelingly 
These warrior-fronted thoughts, discoursing 
might 

In austere majesty, 
Gathering truth by sowing truth. Far, far. 
From this bold, impious war of plumed pomps 

And sly crime-kissing things 
Maddened for power : far from the fool's de- 
light 

And wizard's paradise. 
This faith begot of Triumph, springs 
To godlier emprise, like some sweet rite — 
Some faith-admonishing sacrifice 
Of Israel upborne — till it transforms 
All that it touches to its element : 

Peace, cheer, and warmest heart's-ease. 

O thinker brave ! how from the storms 



An Elegy 37 

Of treason false with green-sick fire and feud, 

And this madman's disease 
Called * Fame/ bred of a pauper's policy- 
Mothered of fiends, and these 
Dead repetends of base conventionality 
Called by its lover * Living,* — ah, how flees 
The heart of man from these atrocities, 
With brided Nature swearing solitude ! 

How doth the heart 
Leap out with its self-faith, shrinking apace 

From the wan, hybrid face 
Of scorn-criers and fools. 

O World ! thou art 
A gorgeous dwelling place ; 
Yet they that love thee for thy sake alone. 
Lie as dead leaves in thy unsexed embrace, — 
Leaves light as air 
By some sirocco of the shades upblown 
Out of the damned, dry-hearted, black 
Unknown ! 



^S The Atnaranth and the Beryl 



X. 



I met a seer upon the heath ; 

Said I, 'What may Death be?—' 
He snuffed the candle, sank and hissed 

That question back to me. 

I met d saint in the dim kirk — 

Celestial robed was he ; 
'And canst thou say what Death is?' — lo! 

Death fell 'twixt him and me. 

I kissed a child on the sea-sands : 
'Thou tell me then ?' cried I ; 

But as I spake, a hot wind rose 
And drank her young heart dry. 

I asked of one whom men call 'fool:' 

A laugh lit up his eye ; 
'Thou tell me first why men were born, 

I'll tell thee why they die.' 

I asked of one whom men call 'wise ;' 

But ah, he vied the fool ; 
He answered with a question still 

That put my heart to school. 



An Elegy 39 

I saw a babe fresh dawned of heaven : 
'And canst thou tell me — say?' 

It smiled and tried to speak, but lo! — 
Sighed and so passed away. 

Still, still I wandered through the wood, 
Praying the trees and flowers ; 

They part their lips to speak and then 
They wither with the hours. 

*Thou fool!' cried I, *why task mankind 
Throned on this funeeal pall ? 

Life answers life with life, and Death 
With death thus answers all. 



4© The Amaranth and the Beryl 



XL 



Speak, thou hermit star of heaven ! 

Must we mission through these years 
Till God's loaf with age grows leaven — 

Bread so bitter-bought of tears? 

Tell me, Sorceress of Morning ! — 
Thou fair-imaged of my youth : 

Come these years with yew adorning 
This Child-seeker after truth ? 

I was sexton of God's churchyard, 
Tolling bells from heaven swung ; 

Came a youth, and cried, * Oh search hard 
For my hopes that died so young!' 

'Nay; these many years, good master, 
Of these tombstone flocks around, 

r have been their praying pastor. 
But thy hopes have here no mound* 

* Strange — most unbelieving wondrous ! ' 
Spake the youth of yew-reeds browed ; 

First Fame kissed, — ah, then she shunned 
us, — 
We who wooed her, pale and proud.' 



An Elegy 41 

Then pressed through the itching even, 
One — a greybeard mariner ; 

* Tell me ! ' cried the seer bcreaven, 

* Where hast laid my hopes that were ? * 

* Sire, I know them not ! ' I uttered ; 

* They were dead long ere my time ; ' 
Then his ashen lips — they muttered 

Words half scripture, half a crime. 

Then came warriors, statesmen, prophets, — 
Shrunken minions of the past : 

Cowled ghosts up from the Tophets 
Of dead Circumstance amassed. 

And they prayed the self-same query. 
And the self-same answers kissed ; 

Then they turned and wept — those weary 
Martyred wrecks, unknown, unmissed. 

Then took I my yoke upon me. 
Swore Ambition's God anew ; 

And no sun of earth outshone me 
In my faith to dare and do. 

And to-day it is grown greater — 
Firmer than 't was ere before ; 

But who says 'twas spleen-eyed Fate, or 
Truth the amulet they wore? — 



42 The Amaranth and the Beryl 

They who came to me and wondered 
Of their gods young-eyed and strange, 

And those rainbow fames that sundered 
With the thunder-curse of change ! 

Speak, thou hermit star of heaven! — 
Must we mission through these years 

Till God's loaf with age grows leaven — 
Bread so bitter-bought of tears ? 



Mtnabel 



Loch Lomon. — 1885. 



A Tale ^t 



A TALE. 



I 



I. 

f. 



Ah, friary vigil of All-hallows eve !• 
Now Memory masks with weirds her chil- 
dren pale, 
And fancies from the fertile bosom heave, 
Crouching them sly upon the eyelids frail. 
See! brided Twilight in her moon-warm veil, 
Hath crept down from the altars of the sky 
With her druid knight in ebon coat of mail, 
While the young Hours their tributes kneel- 
ingly 

Hymn to the panting stars, 'mid wildest 
melody. 



46 Minabel 

II. 

And stark yon towers cut twain the naked sky, 
Like giant priests tossing the censer-moon ; 
Night-ghouls to their black eaves shrink 

hidingly, 
While the saint's prayers on the dead silence 

swoon. 
Ah, Death ! find'st thou in night thy fullest 

noon 
Wherein thy gods compound these hooded 

spells ? — 
Pale Autumn with her lutes all out of tune, 
Kisses the mound where the dead Summer 

dwells, 
And o'er it swings to heaven her requiem 

of bells. 

III. 

The ancient halls in melancholy brood. 
Now people wuth their legends of the past, — 
The revel riot and wan widowhood 
Of brided Beauty, of her race the last. 
Black armors bow as if some thinkings vast 
Crept serpently their voiceless bosoms cold : 
Bethinking how the trump of death had 
massed 



A Tale 47 

These warrior lords who strode these floors 
of old, 
And to the drowsing hours their ancient tales 
retold. 

IV. 

Cornelia's face wore a faint twilight frown — 
A frown that cloaked a prayer ; but she 

spake not, 
Making but nervous stir as followed down 
Her brother's brow those aching volumes 

hot 
From her love-orphaned eyes. Had she 

forgot 
That frail one whom the morn had ta'en 

away — 
That fair-souled innocent so God-begot 
Into the keeping of this sainted day — 
That maiden faith whom death and tombs 

could not dismay. 

v. 

Ah, full of sadness was Cornelia's eye, 
Pensive in far-off wonder-dreams of awe ; 
And foamy-footed shadows paced them by 
Those throbbing lids — fancies in which 
saw 



48 Minahel 

What owned not utt'rance. Then soft did 

she draw 
Her brother's side — he who had knelt him 

near, 
Pond'rous of thought, lab'ring of heart to 

thaw 
This ice-bound problem of his love's young 

year, 
Nor felt his praying cheeks a sister's holy 

tear. 

VI. 

With intertwined arms the moveless twain 
Listened in secret panic to the wind 
Fretted like infant motherless in pain, 
And mutual dread rose on the mutual mind. 
Only the heart could see : reason was blind ; 
The itching silence rousing to a din 
The simplest stir in these vast halls confined , 
And with the sense keen-sharpened from 

within. 
They weighed the truth that was, and all that 

might have been. 

VIl. 

* Oh sister mine,' reed-voiced the brother 
spake. 



A Tale 



49 



*How since the morn my rubied hope hath 

flown ! — 
How hath the Christ exalted, but to make 
This heart grief-hardened, kiss the charnel- 

stone ! 
And now when most my prayers, auspicious 

grown 
In the full faith of saints, lifts up her weal, 
My Minabel is laid all, all alone 
In yonder churchyard nave ; and I shall feel 
Her trothing kiss no more unto my meek 

appeal. 

VIII. 

* Oh God ! not dead — she is not dead, I say ; 

I could not let them lay her in the ground ; 

And though I watched her through the long, 
long day, 

Nor saw one feature stir, nor heard a sound, 

I swore this night she sleep beneath no 
mound — 

I knew not why — she must not : that is all ; 

Not death — no, no ; 't is but a sleep pro- 
found ; 

And not her brow in yonder chapel-hall, 
But ah, my heart alone wears my love's 
funeral pall I ' 



5© Minabel 

IX. 

Though sweet Cornelia's heart was wedging 
wide 

With love that half forgot her easeless woe, 

She murmured not ; but dreamt what holy 
bride 

Might have been blest him whom she hon- 
ored so ; 

And how that great good heart was wont to 
flow 

Its tideless love so pure and passionate, 

Upon that breast now chilled as the young 
snow, 

That would respond with troths immaculate, 
His pleading kiss no more — she, now a sky- 
child's mate. 

X. 

That bride so soon to be her brother's joy — 
That hero's constancy she cherished so — 
Oh Minabel ! how could the grave decoy 
Thy young love thus to lay the bosom low 

' In the far valley churchyard where the snow 
So soon shall thatch thy castle of the tomb, 
Making this yew-couch of malignant woe 
Thy bride-bed on the even when thy groom 

Was all a-flame to wear the amaranth and 
plume ? 



A Tale 51 

XI. 

The youth upraised his eyes catching the last 
Hard-labored flicker of the taper by, 
Stirred to the conscience that his flowery past 
Thus to the socket waned down to die ; — 
Ah, that warm feature of the virgin sky 
Seemed struck to scorn and sorrow on his 

sight ; 
And while he turned a hero's melting eye 
Up to the ancient window at his right, 
The moon flung at his feet mal-omens blear 

and white. 

XII. 

Like huntress from the forest of the stars, 
With pouch and quiver at her girdle caught, 
That heroine of all yon skiey wars — 
Priestess of eld mid lores of earth untaught — 
The moon, came forth and at their still feet 

wrought 
Weird images along the ancient floor ; 
And strange, strange folk on that pale stage 

were brought. 
Dancing the death-dance of the seers of yore : 
He stared, then rose aghast — hissed, lo ! and 

all was o'er. 



52 Minabel 

XIII. 

'Art thou a prophet?' soft Cornelia moaned 
In her wild-visioned soul ; then closer drew 
Her brother's side, and with a will disowned 
These lovers Death who win whome'er they 
woo. 

* Oh sainted Mother ! shield the dead and you, 
Sweet son of Faith — thrice brother by thy 

tears — 
God's will : not mine.' Ah, thus the maiden 

threw ^ 

A cloak upon her heart, melting broad years 
Into one moment's prayer — prayer that but 
heaven hears. 

XIV. 

Cornelia shuddered : for that gallant arm 
Never before had falterd at her side. 

* Forgive me, sister ; cease thy sweet alarm : 
Thy love in mine and I in thine, abide, 
Whatever heaven or fallen Fates betide. 
But, gentlest one, I saw most hideous things 
When yonder smoking taper palely died, — 
All anguished shapes with wizard-painted 

wings 
Dancing a devil-dance where yonder wan 
moon flings 



A Tale 53 

XV. 

That pale arena for half man, half beast. 
And I saw two — two spider-eyed and cold, 
Holding o'er prostrate from infernal feast ; 
And there — there on the soft transparent gold. 
Sported with some sv/eet thing ihe good 

saints hold 
God-reverenced and hallowed over all. 
And as I watched them at their revels bold, 
I shuddered ; for I thought what might 

befall 

Lo! with an impious laugh, they melted on 

the wall! 

XVI. 

'Nay, marvel not my woids, oh, sister sweet, 
Be not affright by these ill-fevered dreams — 

Ha ! God — once more. oh, sister, I entreat 

Hence from this place — come, let us bane 

these themes 
That so berate us. Come ; thou'lt drink of 

streams 
Turned by thy blush of love to rubied wine. 
Come ; lead thou on how deft thy foot- 
step seems 
To crush the darkness ! Thus : thy hand in 
mine ; 
Tluis, gentlest one — my pride, my solace all 
divine !* 



54 Minabel 

«■■■>> ■■-•■••■■•■■■■■■■■■■■■■••■-•••••••■■-■••■••a >■-■•----•---•■••'•■»■---->■■*--•>-»« ••••■«<ia*>^>Baa«aasM'ia.a«-« 

XVII. 

But think you that those honied words could 

hide 
Aught that embalmed that warrior arm in fear 
From sweet Cornelia's heart? Nay; rather 

belied 
What he would fain disguised from self — the 

tear 
Of bleeding passion, by some wanton seer 
To poison turned on the o'er-wearied breast ; 
But on her heart, like some black mutineer 
Of hell his vision fell, while still oppressed, 
Grave omens darkened down that forehead 

of unrest. 

XVIII. 

There was a sigh, a forced smile, a kiss, 

A tender vow that stole from eye to eye, 

A hand-clasp of devotion all submiss 

To heaven, and there they parted ; he, to dry 

His tears on stoic reason : she, to lie 

In her still chamber, and with lids wedged 

wide. 
Gloat the mad revels of that family 
Of fiends round one who there lay cru- 
cified. 
Feasting their savage eyes a wild satiety. 



A Tale ^ c 



XIX. 



Then softly, stole she to her chamber lone, 
Charging her maid swear silence at her side. 
Nor ventured word, for all her spirit flown 
Within one refuge there to brood and bide, 
Was far too sacred ever to confide. 
And so she drooped her lids feigning a 
sleep ; 

But soft her spirit with the one that died 
Kept up communion till the midnight deep. 
And then,— ah, then from heaven her secret 
could not keep. 



XX. 



All feather-sandaled thus the maiden crept 
From her pillow where had bowed no rest, 
Gave one quick wonder at the couch where 
slept 

Her supple maid, then knelt she down and 
blest 

That guardian God upon whose fragrant 

breast 
Her mate that was, was laid all sinlessly. 
And fast Affection's tear-tales manifest 
Reasoned resolve into that anguished eye. 
And queries kissed to heaven : What meant 
this word — *to die?* 



56 Minabel 

XXI. 

Then rose she as from some death-mating 

trance 
Trumped by a regent monitor of God ; 
And on that dun black stage of night did 

dance 
To her lorn eyes those terror-kings that trod 
The sunken depths beneath the sunken sod. 
But valiance sceptred on that liegeless hour, 
Slept at her torn heart's side ; and with a rod 
Of woman's will, — ah, most propitious dower, 
Struck headlong to the shades these gloom- 
fiends that devour. 

XXII. 

The moon knelt at her feet awhile she drew 
The sober mantle o'er her reedy frame ; 
And only they that peopled darkness knew 
How beautiful forth from her couch she 

came. 
And only they — sweet elves half-flushed of 

shame — 
Made haste to shield her from the eager air, 
Vouchsafing grace to reassure her aim 
Which seemed, in truth, faint-mothered of 

despair, 
Till done, she trembling crept down, down 

the great broad stair. 



A Tale 



XXIII. 



57 



Oh shield her, Saints ! aye, shield her from 

the night 
With its dread councils of the dark and deep. 
Poor, sorrow-hearted, willow-weeping wight 
Who could not from her friend the secret keep. 
Even if Death — that vesper-imaged sleep — 
Dared forth to wedge those sister loves apart ; 
But on she pressed like fever-dreams that 

creep 
Through the sick slumbers with such tor- 
tuous art, — 
On to the churchyard kirk, there to lay bare 
her heart. 

XXIV. 

The court was gained, and lo ! the open sky ; 
Then felt she those child-fears forsaking fast, 
And this communion which she held on high, 
God-proven now by all the stars that cast 
Their vestal-eyed vouchsafements from their 

vast 
And ancient eyes all goldenly her way. 
Seeming to wed the present with the past. 
Shaming these heady dreams that would affray 
So innocent a heart as scarce had learned to 

pray. 



5 8 Minabel 

XXV. 

The great clock shuddered in the haunted 

tower 
As if half 'fraid to trespass on the night ; 
But with her eyes in heaven, this maiden 

flower 
Braved steadfastly her path all neutral bright, 
Pressing lier fingers to her bosom white. . , , 
The clock — it ceased ; lo ! like a dirge for one 
Taking the convent vows of eremite, 
It died ; and there our virgin champion 
Entered the forest deeps grey-cowled like a 

nun. 

XXVI 

Hush ! how from every ancient yawn and nook 
Unearthly things came forth to greet that 

face. 
How" lingered they in every branch that shook 
Death-rattles to the fiends with mad grimace ! 
How strode they forth from every hiding 

place 
Where thing unholy would most likely be, 
Bearing cold maladies in their embrace — 
Damps of the tomb whence they were scarce 

set free ; 
But she, — ah, child of Faith, no thing of pain 

saw she. 



A Tale 59 
1 ■ 

XXVII. 

At last the churchyard. 'T was a solemn place 
E'en in the wreathing haloes of the morn ; 
But now each tombstone was a pallid face — 
An infant Christ on the still moon-watch born. 
And she — this still-enduring child and lorn — 
Pressed up the narrow aisles that part the 

graves, 
Charging the panic of her heart to scorn, 
Treading a warrior step like one who braves 
Defiance to the fiends and thus a nation saves. 

XXVIII. 

The chapel — oh, what holy resting-place 
On the death-march from cradle to the tomb, 
Wherein that morn, seeming in Death's em- 
brace. 
Was laid that shieldless bud of Christly 

bloom, — 
Laid gently there, her swift soul's anteroom 
Ere in that castle of the frosten ground 
She 'spoused be to that black-featured groom 
Who builds for saints his mansion of the 

mound, — 
Aye, saints and knaves alike, the crowned and 
the uncrowned. 



6o Minabel 



XXIX. 

A bat affrayed of the bowed stranger's step, 
Upstirred the silence with distressful wing, 
Rousing the maiden heedless of the dead, 
From her still reverie ; and, stricken thing, 
With sudden halt and frame all shuddering. 
She found her by the lonely chapel door • 
Then for the first, her task — it seemed to wring 
Too great a grief, and staggering to that floor 
Of crouching sods, she knelt one tremulous 
moment more. 

XXX. 

*Oh virgin Mother ! what delirious oath 
Compels my reason to this madman's quest ? 
What seek I here ? Oh by my brother's troth — 
His poor child-bride God knows hath found 

her rest. 
What whip of grief urges this passive breast 
On a fool's mission to the coffined dead ? 
Oh pity, heaven, for her thus dispossessed 

Of faith But hush! hark! what low 

moan of dread 
Through yon dark chapel nave into the mid- 
night bled? 

XXXI. 

O Christ ! thou pour'st compassion on the 
blind. 



A Tale 6i 

llil>ii-»a»iia>^ii^............,....... 

And weak, and palsied : bear me to my feet 
Ha ! once again — that voice. Sweet saints ! 

unbind 
This frensied heart and let me haste retreat. 
Help ! or I perish in this madcap heat- 
Mother! brother! ha! once again that cry- 
How numb my brain— my heart hath ceased 

to beat 

But list !— 'tis her's, 'tis her's. Sweet saints 

on high ! — 
Shield me— 'tis her's— God ! God!— no, no : 

she shall not die.' 

XXXII. 

Then struggling o'er these mounds of ancient 

dead, 
She hissed to heaven : 'I am a child no more !' 
And with her arms flung high above her head, 
She plunged forward against the chapel door : 
It yielded, and slie fell prone to the floor, 
Her hand — it touched a woman's icy feet ; 
She shrank, ah, then she clasped them, for 

they wore 
The silken sandals of that death-bride swecc 
Who only yestermorn slept in her winding sheet. 

XXXIII. 

A yawning moment, but it bridged an age 
Ere that sweet childling faith rose from her 
swoon : 



62 Minabel 

Ten thousand madcap dreams made pilgrim- 
age 
Down on that crucial heart ; but soon, ah, soon 
She snatched her spirit back whence it was 

hewn 
Asunder, and with braving trust upraised. 
O Christ ! how cruelly the bloated moon 
Through the wide door upon that phantom 
gazed ; 
Dumd sate th' beholding one with all her 
senses crazed. 

XXXIII. 

With eyes full wide she stared the figure tall — 
That spectral attitude at her faint side. 
When lo ! a wreath from the wan breast did fall 
Upon her brow as if she too had died. 
Then starting back, she threw her hands full 

wide, 
Clasping the shape that bent before her face. 
Ah, then sank back more strangely terrified, 
For that still form stood cold in her embrace — 
Cold as the coffin-pyx whence she had crept 

apace. 

XXXV. 

The silence — 't was the god-sire of the night : 
The night, of all the people of the tomb ; 
The stars with bleeding looks so leprous white 
Crept sly into that solemn-rited roon;i ; 



A Tale 63 

Crept with their twinkling beacons to illume 
Those ravished altars priestless and alone 
Save one dim candle laboring on the gloom — 
A sad companion for a spirit flown 
To vigil through the shades a Christ-child to 
the throne. 

XXXVI. 

Before the altar stood the widowed bier 
Mounted by that black castle of the dead ; 
One moment gone, by her who standeth here 
'Twas tenanted, aye, there she laid her head ; 
And there the trance that frose her bosom fled, 
And she awoke^ — poor orphan elf of pain — 
Awoke, O God ! to what a world of dread ; 
Mayhap 'twere better had the 'wildered brain 
Shattered, and so sank back on easeful death 
again. 

XXXVII. 

But nay ; 't was other will than her's that rose 
And kissed to life that spirit's citadel 
From which mayhap it never fled : w'no knows ? 
But there that lidless silver-portaled shell 
Stood mockingly, as if an infidel 
Of death and all its creeds that harrow man ; 
And torn shrouds strewn as at the brink of hell. 
Told how a being by some godly plan 
Was snatched back into life from slumbers 
lethean. 



64 Minabel 

XXXVIII. 

Cornelia bowed and prayed for heaven to nurse 
Some valid purpose to her yielding aim, 
Solving this myst'ry, whether crown or curse, 
That ran dull poison through her feeble frame. 
Ah, then sweet answer to her faint prayer came, 
And trust renewed that heart betroubled so, 
And soft she rose, and with a secret shame 
For this faint fear, all, all she seemed to know 
And with a titan will struck back her rebel woe. 

XXXIX. 

*0 Minabel! all, all— I know it all,' 
She whispered ; but those lips made no reply. 
And then Cornelia threw her sable shawl 
About the form death seemed to beautify 
By its short sojourn in that angel's eye, 
Caressing the stiff hands that cleaved her side. 
Entreating still this maiden mystery 
Till through the open port the twain did glide. 
Two saint-like shapes on, on into the church- 
yard wide. 

XL. 

Then turned Cornelia to her speechless charge 
And as the moon laid bare that sculptured face. 
She looked, and lo ! the maiden's eyes full 

large 
Gazed vacant as upon some far-off chase. 



A Tale 65 

The brave girl trembled, yet to her embrace 
The closer drew her Minabel, and spake : 
' Oh angel Mother ! plead for all the grace 
Thy Christ endues his lovers, for my sake ; ' 
And on and on thy trailed, leaving a starry 
wake. 

XLI. 

The wood that held the churchyard in its 
palms— 

A treasure secret from the world profane — 

They entered ; and the beggar-boughs asked 
alms 

With outstretched hands a-cold and soft com- 
plain, 

Even of this benighted vestal twain, 

Sweet nuns on some dark Dead-Sea pilgrim- 
age. 

And the witched winds made moan as if in 
pain. 

And druid stars in their sunk hermitage 
Peeped through the thatching leaves down on 
this maiden mage. 

XLII. 

Oh, weirdest of ye ancient sisterhoods 
Who counted rosaries of dead men's skulls, — 
Who raised strange altars in primeval woods 
And plucked the vitals from the plump sea- 
gulls,— 



66 Minabel 

Thine were the spells this rack of Change 

annuls ; 
Ye sported with that hostage bowed by Time ; 
But here the lustre of your glamour dulls, 
Though night was ne'er so hideously sublime, 
When tombstones pray to heaven as if living 
were crime. 

XLIII. 

But on and on this maiden pioneer 
Bearded the darkness with a sovereign tread, 
Nor glanced abroad lest over-moved of fear, 
She swoon amort upon that sodden bed ; 
And there with one mayhap already dead, 
Her frail soul might dis(jv>n its earthy shell, 
And all the busy Mysteri. s that wed 
Wan Midnight, in their cerements come and 

dwell 
Even by that sick soul, swinging their censer- 
spell. 

XLIV. 

The border gained, the open sky once more 
In wonder-tribute bent sweet homage down ; 
And strength into that swooned heart did 

pour, 
The jealous moon threw from her brow the 

crown. 
Then turned the maid to her in death-white 

gown, 



A Tale 67 

Daring to speak. Ye saints ! how fell her words 
Upon the greedy air that seemed to drown 
Her griefs in panic like the lone death-bird's 
Where India's Silent Tower the bones of mil- 
lions girds. 

XLV. 

But in reply to that half strangled voice 

No answer came. And still those strange 

eyes gazed 
Godward on some Unseen of far-off choice — 
Some vast Undreamt in yon death-deeps en- 
mazed. 
Sweet Star of Bethlehem the angels praised 
Ere thou returned to joy thy sister so ! — 
She who but yestereve drank till half crazed 
Of her brave brother's grief, all heaven doth 

glow 
In thy sweet eyes e'en now as but an hour ago. 

XLVI. 

The castle seemed like magian tall to tread 
Closer and closer from that region high, 
Cowled in some druid habit of the dead 
Against the cloud-zoned, talismanic sky. 
And now they passed the portal safely by, 
Creeping on to the mammoth oaken door ; 
It creaked — cliey entered, and with faintest sigh 
It closed behind them : all was dark before. 



6S Minabel 

Still like witched winds they swept along that 
great hall floor. 

XLVII. 

Ah, then with taper in her staid right hand, 
She threw her left about her wonder-guest, 
Urging her as by an enchanter's wand 
Up the broad stair as onward still they pressed 
On to the chamber where from strange unrest 
Mid wild resolves a weird-won hour ago 
She crept ; and there as one of j&ends pos- 
sessed, 
She prostrate fell upon the white couch low, 
Weeping — yet wherefore ? — oh, ye braves of 
woman's woe. 

XLVIII. 

Again she dashed the tears that clung her 

cheek, 
And sprang back to that wordless being's side 
Who gazed still vacant with no voice to speak. 
No ears to hear, no glow in her eyes wide. 
Aye, all of nature seemingly had died 
Within that breast so marble-hued and cold. 
And still, the wight obediently complied 
With all her loved one's sweet enforcement 

told, 
And as she stood, down-dropt her mantle fold 

on fold. 



A Tale 69 



XLIX. 



And there Cornelia robed her for the night, 
Bearing those cerements all, all away ; 
And in her pensive trim ethereal white, 
She drew the weird one by the stiff hands, 

aye, 
E'en drew her to her humble knees to say 
With her that even prayer as oft' of yore ; 
And in that gloom of midnight did she pray 
Such words as never swept her lips before, 
While knelt the meek soul down beside her on 

the floor. 



L. 



Oh God ! what record made that prayer in 

heaven ? — 
What stars did reel with a celestial stir ! — 
What angels drank its depth and hence were 

given 
O'er deeper feeling power to minister. 
Thou potent-naiured child-philosopher, 
Pouring out virtue from thy grief -wrung 

heart ! — 
Of thy sweet deeds God be the arbiter ; 
What thou hast spoke, no mortal lips impart: 
Thy words shall live as heaven that inade but 

shields its art. 



7© Minabel 

LI. 

Then soft they rose, and in her azure bed 
She laid her dear one with the first sweet 

smile 
That kissed her lips since yestermorn had fled 
Her God-born peace into that long exile ; 
And then she, too, with thoughts sweet- 
cheered erewhile. 
Crept in and nestled down by that cold frame, 
Daring upon her heart to reconcile 
These hooded mysteries which o'er her came, 
And in that couch still warm, essayed her fears 
to tame. 

LII. 

But aweless sleep sits not on the shut lids 
Though wooed by warriors if the heart's 

a-flame ; 
And her the supple midnight hour forbids 
To nurse to slumber, and bold dreams de- 
fame 
The peace of that shut bosom into shame 
And riot rankling 'mid these throbbings sad ; 
And then with hushed compulse did she ex- 
claim : 
' Death ! art thou come, or is this poor wit 
mad ? — 
Sweet heaven ! why this galled union unto my 
full cup add ? ' 



A Tale 71 

LIII. 

* She lives ! she lives ! ' and then in tempest 

doubt : 
' Nay, 't is a mad, mad dream, and I am reft. 
Good Saints ! rail back this myth that hounds 

me out 
With devils' craft taking my soul in theft !' 
And then as one with her staid reason cleft, 
She leaned her warm brow close her Minabel, 
Pressing her keen ear to that bosom's left 
And listened — nothing ! not one throb did 

swell 
That stone-cold sepulchre where once a soul 

did dwell. 

LIV. 

Then back upon her pillow all undone, 
Cornelia hid her face, clenching her teeth ; 
And sweat — hard sweat, from that chilled 

brow did run 
Adown her cheek bathing her hair beneath. 
Ah, then half swoon half slumber like a 

wreath 
Descended easefully upon that brain. 
And the sick heart sunk in a golden sheath 
Of rest and quiet, those sly things of pain 
Forsook their cruel sport and fled nightward 

again. 



7 2 Minabel 

LV. 

God calm her now — that weary-drowsed one, 
Sweet-souled extremist in all logic good — 
She who knew not if Death had here undone 
Her brother's bride, or she herself was wooed 
Of that alms-asking Knight, and she now stood 
Upon the threshold of the castle Christ 
She long had prayed with all her womanhood 
E'en to be worthy of ; or if enticed 
Into some hell where love to hate lies sac- 
rificed. 

LVI. 

Peace unto her ! that anguish-swooned child, 

That patient oracle of will divine ; 

And shield her, ye who 'friend the night 

exiled ! — 
And grant her refuge, thou pacific shrine ! — 
Soothest of homes where poppies intertwine 
And Love attunes the world to second heaven, 
Make pilgrimage and easefully recline, 
Bearing away this heart's unholy leaven, 
And slumber float a-down as on the sleepers 

seven. 



A Tale 73 



II. 



I. 

The Faith-child of the morning rose and filled 
The cup of all the East with rubied wine. 
The joyless riots of the night were stilled, 
And all the cloud-nymphs of the dawn did 

twine 
The triumphs of young Day with sprays 

divine, 
Kissing libations brimmed of diamond dews: 
' Peace to the parted star !' Thy azure sign, 
Sweet Mother ! sees new-born in godliest hues 
All laws of life and love that virgin Rapture 

woos. 

II. 

And he, the castle's youthful son and lord — 
Cornelia's brother and her flushed heart's 

pride — 
Came forth from couch where many a predal 

hoard 



74 Minabel 

Of dreams with baneful offspring did abide. 
Came forth with heart as dead as it had died 
Thrice in the rheumy tomb-damps of the 

night — 
Came forth to wander where his pale young 

bride 
With his own hand he laid so sinless white 
In the broad chapel arms vouchsafed his touch 

and sight. 

III. 

That sanctuary of the early gods — 

The forest, like its priest the young knight 

pressed, 
As if he reared his temple from these sods 
Whereon he knelt and poured his voicings 

blest. 
And on, with head bowed low upon his breast. 
He struggled through the music-weaving 

wood, 
Nor joyed the mating bird above her nest — 
It mocked him; and he drew in one black 

hood 
His thoughts upon his heart, therein to house 

and brood. 

IV. 

He neared the holy kirk with quivering lip ; 
^Up, up, my spirit brave !' he inly said, 



A Tale 



75 



Nor felt the sweats from his ribbed temples 

drip, 
But drew him on and up the steps that led 
To that sweet sanctuary of the dead, 
Raising his eyes e'en at the open door ; 
'What is't ?' he shrieked. ' The guardian god- 
dess fled ?....' 
Then fell he prone upon that sodden flooj-, 
Stunned of belief ; and oh, his face — what hell 
it wore ! 

V. 

Then like sweet lightning to the gorged cloud. 
The truth sped to his blind o'er-sanguine 

brain ; 
And seized of the mad thought, he cried 

aloud : — 
*She lives — Oh God !' and so sank back again. 
Poor fag of savage love and all its pain. 
So still benight of the sick raven's wings — 
Supine he lay like some Faith's martyr slain, 
Dreamful at heart of fairest, soothest things 
Beading his crownless brow with angel minis- 

terings. 

VI. 

Lo ! all beheld he through the open door, — 
The narrow host robbed of its treasure now. 
These cerements that swept the altar floor, 



7 6 Minabel 

Yon candle drowsing out its perjured vow, — 
All, all he saw, and on his galled brow 
The leaden logic bore down such a weight, 
His mind and he parted — he knew not how, 
But had he been a Titan's elder mate, 
'T would tasked him as a god to bear his risen 
state. 

VII. 

Long, long he lay prone on the sapphired 

dews ; 
The sun — it came and sported on his cheek. 
And of those tears made rainbows of rich hues. 
All promise-bearing to his spirit weak. 
The parted lips of lieaven seemed to speak, 
And shadows played upon that cloistered 

breast 
As 'twere a harp of Faith, and they with 

meek 
Soft finger-tips rocked the mad world to rest. 
And God in all things pure was triumph man- 
ifest. 

VIII. 

Ah, then with step light as the virgin dews, 
A breathless form came through tlie winged 

wood 
With eagerest eyes and cheeks of amorous 

hues — 



A Tale 



77 



One of the Graces in Love's sisterhood — 
Came like a freshful fragrance of the good, 
Type of the Hand that touched to sight the 

blind : 
Came chapelward till suddenly she stood 
Tearful beside him — him her whole mankind, 
Her whole heart's creed — then knelt she low 
where he reclined. 

IX. 

So bent she down with lips all solace now, 
Pressing his cheek to rouse him from that 

dream 
She knew was sweet for well she read that 

brow ; 
But be it very heaven, no joy could seem 
One half so beautiful as her's, — no theme 
Of angels half so warm, so pure, so free ; 
And softly, swiftly in a panting stream 
His thoughts flowed back unto her kisses 

three : 
He ope'd his eyes, and lo ! a face all open glee. 

X. 

' O sister, sister ! ' prayed the orphan youth, 
'Thy smiles ! thy look of love !— speak, speak, 

what is't ? ' 

Then gazing at the kirk as if the truth 
Still hung in mystery, he muttering hissed. 



78 ^inabel 

And cloaked his brow is if a charnel mist 
Swung in the breach and would not rend away. 
And then Cornelia clasped his hands and 

kissed 
Those temples hot, and more than tongue 

could say, 
Drew from her breast a ring that 'mid the 

sweet folds lay. 

XI. 

At sight of that fair token did his eyes 
Bewilder, and his cheek grow bloodless pale ; 
And then love seemed to solve its own surprise: 
Seizing the rose, with one disburdened wail, 
He took it to his lips, and on her veil 
Fell weeping — aye, the first and strangest 

tears 
That drenched his yearning lids since woman 

frail 
Made e'en a child of him ; and all swift fears 
And griefs were triumphs now, swelling mo- 
ments to years. 

XII. 

She took his hands as many a time before, 
And rising drew them to her even side ; 
Then bent these lovers homeward, while each 

wore 
To each the truth of truths no art could hide. 



A Tale 



79 



Aye, for the very fulness of its tide, 

Love choked and could not force its tributes 

free ; 
And there they pressed the paths where she 

did guide 
But yesternight tliat maiden mystery 
Who sank and rose again as Venus from the 

sea. 

XIII. 

On, on they glided, neither venturing word. 
But cheered of that divinest mutual cheer, 
'Mid omens sweet fresh from the throated bird. 
And promise on the early chanticleer. 
Oh Christ ! what morn for Youth some great 

career 
To swear mid-venture, and make bold for 

fame : 
To drive back Xerxes, or that mutineer 
Of hell with warrior heart that knows no 

shame 
For God and honesty, in some brave faith-fed 

aim. 

XIV. 

'Good brother ! yesternight was Hallow-e'en : 
I promised on my iieart to greet you well — 
E'en in tlie thorny season of thy spleen 
To prove a bride would in thy household dwell. 
And now, by all the stars the seers foretell 



8o Minabel 

I shall fulfil the holy vow I made, 
And thou shalt see despite the lone kirk knell, 
That saintly one that hath our prayer obeyed : 
Up, brave, my warrior knight ! — this be thy 
love's crusade.' 

XV. 

He answered not ; but clenched his bloodless 

hand. 
Unsteady stepped and forward leaned his 

head ; 
The knotted veins did on his brow expand, 
As they through yester's Dolorosa led. 
And sweet Cornelia when her words were said, 
Pressed warm her rosary to her soft breast. 
Praying — nay, not with words : her very tread 
Was a most fervent orison expressed. 
All hope, faith, gratitude — one rite of saints 

thrice blest. 

XVI. 

They passed the court ; the groom — ah, wil- 

dered one, 
Shrank e'en as if a god swept holy by ; 
Or in her person fair a fragrant sun 
Had dropt to earth. On through the needle's 

eye 
The twain quick glided from the open sky. 
Into the ball mosaic drear and old. 



A Tale 8i 

And softly scaled the stair that led so high 
It seemed to heaven ; and with a passion bold 
On, on, — then halting, stood black-mantled 
fold on fold. 

XVII. 

He dared not more— that Spartan-fathered 

boy 
Who would have ravaged headlong through 

the grave 
To beard a foe ; but like a serpent's toy, 
He stood enchanted in that mazed nave. 
In vain he scourged : ' Oh dastard soul !— be 

brave ;' 
Clenching his palm upon that beating sore. 
But on swept brave Cornelia ; and that slave 
Of love uplooked— lo ! through her chamber 

door 
She fled, and there alone the heavy cross he 

bore. 

XAIII. 

What thousand turmoils through his arrowy 

brain 
Dashed riot as he stood in dread amaze,- 
Gloating the mystery like coward Cain, 
Rocked on the wild delirium of his gaze ! 
Then half recovering from his wonder-daze, 
He struggled onward as a scarce-taught child ; 



82 Minabel 

His heart now cold with fear, now warm with 

praise, 
On toward that sanctuary where his heaven 

smiled 
Halting amain full oft' and his spent limbs 

reviled. 

XIX. 

Then leaning half upon the ancient wall, 
He crept like snail on to that mammoth 

door ; 
Lo! 'twas ajar, and through it heard he all : 
A voice that seemed his dead soul full restore, 
A voice that lifted his faint-throbbing core 
To Eden, and this faltering arm of woe 
Into a manhood never felt before, — 
That virtue by which did the gods o'erthrow 
The shades of Erebus, bearding them back 
below. 

XX. 

'What moves thee so?' a whispering plaint 

he heard, 
* How strange thy face, O sister, and so pale ! 
Ah, what mad hap hath rent thy weal, sweet 

bird. 
Prompting these myst'ries on thy eyelids 

frail? 
Oh surely have I not well slept ? some veil 



A Tale ^t, 

'Twixt this bright hour and yesternight seems 

swung — 
Troth ! *twas a strange, strange sleep. Oh 
tell the tale ; 
Some wonder-thing hath happened that thy 

young 
Sweet lute of love be thus by these wild looks 
unstrung.' 

XXI. 

The youth knelt low upon the stone-coid 

floor, 
Straining his spirit toward that voicing fair 
To drink its depth and on its sweetness pour 
The warm libations of his constant prayer. 
How that faint oracle robbed young Despair 
Of all dread usurpation on his heart ! — 
How came those words like angels unaware 
Closing the wound, and by some saintlike art 
Wore 'way the scar where fell that barbed and 

poisoned dart! 

XXII. 

' Sister ! draw near,' flowed on that voice 
a-flame ; 

'Draw near, sweet friend ; oh, why this net- 
tled brow? — 

These warm cheeks by some anguish strange 
or shame, 



^4 Minabel 

Dry of their bloom ? — oh, tell me, sister, now : 
When came I here ? — how came I ? — tell me, 

how? — 
For I remember — I remember naught. 
Oh weep not so ; thus, o'er my bosom bow- 
God ! what a change Speak ! speak ! hath 

ill been wrought 
My love — thy brother? . . . Ha! — Christ praised ! 

. . . .'t was a horror-thought. 

XXIII. 

*Then why thy ravished temples bead with dew 
As with some secret bleeding, sister sweet ? 
Oh, answer not with tears and that strange hue 
Changing upon thy cheeks from chill to 

heat. . . . 
Oh, I have slept a long, long sleep replete 
With dreams so beautiful, so golden all, 
I half do wish me back in that strange seat — 
That border heaven in which I seemed to 

fall- 
Why weep so, sister, — say, what dares thy 

heart apall ? — 

XXIV. 

* Have I e'er done thee any evil thing — 
One word, one look ? — forgive me, gentle dear. 
Thou know'st through all mal-fortunes I 
would cling 



A Tale 85 

Thy holy side what say'st? — for joy thy 

tear ? — 
For joy ? — what joy ? Oh bending heaven 

hear ! 
What stirs this spirit from its tempered range ? 
I see, yet know not ; list', and still my ear 
Mocks me ! Oh what mad world hath wrung 

this change 
Upon all holy things with glamours deep and 

strange? ' 

XXV. 

Then sprang the nerved youth as one long dead 
Recovering the light, clasping his hands 
Unto his grief-washed eyes ; and bowed of 

head, 
One moment stood as on the Dead Sea sands 
Braving a dream. Ah, then with heart half 

man's 
Half god's, invoking, with a backward tread, 
His arms he wrenched as if to break the bands 
That chained his soul, and raised them o'er 

his head, 
Then leaped through tii' parted door and knelt 

down by her bed. 

XXVI. 

Down at her feet the stricken lover lay, 
A prostrate worshipper before that shrine, 



86 Minabel 

Weeping the tears that melted all away 
The frosts of death about those shrouds di- 
vine. 
God treasure thee, and be his peace all thine. 
Thou earnest one whose love is proven so, — 
And saints pour on thy faltering soul the 

wine 
The Savior drank and buried mortal woe, 
And, hearer ! thy cup as well with that same 
overflow. 



The 7 ruth'god 



Femce.—tSZS, 



The Truth-God 89 



®h^ ®trwth-Cl50^: 



BOOK FIRST. 



Chorus of the Arts, — The solitude of the Truth- 
God. — The birth and fall of the First-born of 
Science and Truth. 

" O Priest eterne of the all-templed Space — 
" Thou genesis of the dumb Increate — 
" Truth ! by celestial act the lifter-up 
"Of the void-wombed paternity of heaven ; 
"Another Day hath swept its sacrifice 
"Low at thy big approach, and by such proof 
" Of sweet allegiance to our primal sire, 
" Sworn down the conquest gods on thy right 

arm, 
" With Earth and all yon star-world intervals 
"Within the reach of thy supremest touch, 
" Feudal in suppliance, craving all their being 
" But in the shadow of thy sovereign hest. 
"Another Day hath pilgrimed up the slant 
"Twixt the divided stars, through forlorn 

moors 



90 The Truth-God 



*' Shoreless as Erebus lamped by the fiends, 

" Republics sunless and unsexed realms 

" Of the unpeopled and ungirdled Free, 

" O'er crowned and battlemented keeps of 

Faith, 
'* O'er things called 'holy' proffered to the dogs 
•'For filial worship, over mountainous seisms 
" Propped priestless save by ignorance of thee, 
"And bawd-born sainthood virgin but to fall, 
" O'er crags of counter-hate and templed creeds 
'* Pinnacled in mist with jutty altar place 
''Shrunk from the scurved noon of man's 

content, — 
"Aye, thus Day greets thee sovereign till the 

trump 
'* Of Chaos and reversal void. Thus greets; 
"And from that profound Charter-court of 

Time, 
" Hath borne the sun with all his incense fierce 
"To lamp our homage worshipful to thee, 
" Beseeching thee a morrow ! Hear our prayer, 
" O chiefest Unapproachable of eld ! — 
"Thou major Might of the Olympian strong — 
'*Yea, hear their prayer, and let Creation still 
" Beard back ambitious Chaos, and be glad 
" In all her azure seasons of emprise!" 

So sang the Arts with multiplying thrill — 
These cloud-choired minstrels of ascendant 

state — 



The Truth- God 91 

Up to their Regent signaled Infinite ; 
And as he bent his eyes in sweet assent, 
Their silver concord melted on the wild 
To baby-murmurs and commotion faint, 
Echo on echo swooning till the last 
Sank back on heaven whence it rose and ruled. 
Then unseized of these heraldries of state, 
The Truth-god rose as maimed of weariness 
Of the long day's blue battling, and threw down 
The mitre aud red mantle of his state 
Athwart his throne with scarce a reverent 

glance. 
Turning away as if in easement sweet 
And solace soothing that the day was done ; 
For truth had sat a thousand teemed hours 
With up-poised arm commandant to the stars. 
Had ruled and faltered, rose and ruled again, 
As rose and fell the throbbing heart of heaven. 
And now a time of sweet deliverance 
Had come, and with a grateful smile, he kissed 
His palms to th' kindly goddess of his weal, 
O'erthankful for this couchant interval 
Of peace apportioned of sen^nest ease. 
And quiet rest yokeless of Custom's scourge. 
E'en from this throne of heaven went he 

forth •, 
E'en from his realm in the wild heart of man — 
This Soul's-land where mankind have served 
their will 



92 The 2\uth-God 



To whim and machination — ventured forth 

As one who sought a healing solitude 

From his heart's huge turmoils, passing the 

arch 
Where that omnipotence at stir of morn 
Entered, and snatching up the primordial 

mace, 
Bade virgin Life to live, and Day to be. 

Through stalwart nave and star-pavilioned 

court. 
Through peristyle of porphyry and flint 
Misty of incence by the twilight guled, 
On through the chancel of more potent gods 
Than Pagan knew or Magi, where lay prone 
These prophets whose large province 'tis their 

charge 
To batter back th' presuming arms of hell 
That tempt the willing, fainting heart of man 
With teasing seisms nectared in disguise, 
Called by that name which cries : 'There is no 

God, 
There is no Light, no Truth, no Faith, no Hell' 
On, on, he pressed with trenchant ears damned 

up. 
Lest some importunate and questioning one 
Tear back the bonds that swathed his rankling 

heart, 
And cry him to the wound. On, on, he strained 



The Truth God 93 

Through fairest arcs majestic to the sense, 
On to the gates where in the dim beyond 
All open-armed of greeting, lay a wood 
Necklaced of jasper walls and over-teemed 
Of all the sylvan boast of peerest dreams 
In osiered coves by god-arts husbanded \ 
Lo ! as he raised his eyes the portals swung, 
And he passed on and sought his solitude. 

The twilight still red-armored to the glooms. 
Reluctant sheathed its passion ; but its spell 
Still laid upon the opaque brow of dusk 
Its fever-finger as to halt it back, 
As if repugnant Eve should know no star 
To vigil out her season. Th' coward sun 
With flaming heels a-rack ran barefoot down 
The slanting nave of the out-battled West 
To refuge ; and the lorn-eyed Charity — 
She of benignant birth, with belted eyes 
Like two bowled Saturns plucked from heaven 

and hung 
From that warm, frownless forehead orbed 

and bright-- 
That quick libation to the God of love — 
Was not yet from her search through the pied 

vales 
Of Georgia centaur-castled, or the heights 
Of Oregon for that God-virtual reed 
Wherewith to soothe the babe which on this 

hour 



94 The Truth-God 

Should kiss the zenith with all-sentient eyes ; 
For there pitched high of sweet expectancy, 
The courtly deities assembled were, 
Clustered at large 'mid the wide porticos 
That skirt the realmed chambers where thai 

hour 
Science her first-born into peerest weal 
Should nurture, and this earth be rent with 

glee 
In triumph to our blest deliverer 
Who from this galled rack of Circumstance — 
This purplind yoke of Custom, and these wiles 
Of sophistry opprobrious to the true, 
The pure, regenerate and feelingful. 
Should free a curst mankind. 

And Poesy, — 
Ah, freest, fairest of the sovereign Arts, — 
She born of Beauty, with great godly eyes 
Looking redemption on the world as through 
Two wounds in th* side of Christ, — aye, there 

stood she. 
Heart all a- flame before the mammoth gates. 
Tenting her eyes on the dim horizon 
For her late-coming king ; but greeted not, 
She sighed as one whom Hope had stubborned 

still. 
And touched her forehead with a fever-stir, 
Wondering. And now as by dint of augury 



The 1 ruth-God 95 

Propitious to the option of the gods, 
The whole compulsive universe was hushed 
In sweet suspense bred of a lifting hope, 
With tongue still itching for applause, with 

eyes 
Rapturous of images of him to come ; 
And Nature buried from all wry reproach 
In the all-eared expectancy that made 
This Spring-tide zone a double feast of love. 

Deep-thoughted in his forest hermitage, 
Alien to all the pomps of his estate 
Seized of this Titan mutiny, estranged 
E'en from his brazen-armored outer Self, 
The Truth-god knelt him on his mantle spread 
For but one kind communion with his soul — 
One boastless self-confession. Lo ! there hnng 
Mid-realmed of th' eaving twilight the wild 

weirds 
That forced e'en the inanimate to think ; 
And all the broad-browed universe seemed 

hushed 
In some sweet seeking, pouring faith-wise on 
The dim pale phantasies of the staid god 
A diligence divine. Pillowing there 
His heaven-transcending eyes, he poured aloft 
The void god-oracled the full and rich 
All-golden effluence of his taut soul 
Which rose one still oblation, while the rent 



96 The Truth- God 

Deep at the heart of heaven was dammed up 
To list his solemn musings. 

Ah, then down 
This thrice-rent nave of liegeless Chaos poured 
More palpable in all her sable arms, 
The ebon Night, hooding the cloistered wood — 
This skiey hermitage of seer-browed pines. 
And sycamore and monumental oak 
As if so many silvan priests ordained 
For midnight ministration and deep deeds. 
And still the couchant peer sat consecrate 
To that space-cleaving trance, nor made light 

stir 
Upon the milken element to point 
Unto the ghouls his shelved hiding place. 

And there came forth from orphaned realms 
beyond. 
From widowed sovereignties and alien arcs 
Beyond the searching ken of even gods, 
From armored stars unborn to th' eyes of men, 
Planets where Truth is curst and law unhoused 
By anarch arms rebellious to the gods. 
And from republics of the human heart — 
Fond ministrations eager for the light — 
These came, and many more unheralded, 
Swift palmers in the guise of phantasy 
Sinking into his brain : they of huge deed 
Wrought on the mid-arenas of the sun. 



The Truth- God 97 

Bold Thespians of star-staged theatres 
Audienced of th' applauding galaxies, — 
Ah, came they all, each of some tragic role 
God-membered, knit of brows and pitched of 

pride. 
And came there too, featured of eldest weal, 
The harbingers of palpitating Time 
In chronicled demesnes, rebellions fall'n 
Parched into penitence by surfeit damned ; 
The legends of dispeopled moons, and all 
These muniments of azure treasury 
Roused from the topmost nave of subject 

heaven, 
The heritance of era unto era 
And greybeard age to age ! These knelt their 

scrolls 
From the blue archives of the truth of truths : 
The history of heaven from the birth 
Of headlong Time through all these epochs 

linked — 
The lineage of each God-attribute, 
The ancestries of Change and Death and 

Power, 
And all the martial Arms and Arts eterne 
Which link the sway of Truth in one wide zone. 
Aye, these and many more, with bleeding looks 
Strained to the tention of their holy mood, 
Their grave confessions knelt them as a child 
Unto its reverend sponsor. And there alone, 



98 The Truth' God 



The silent Truth-god bent, and opened wide 
Unto each pilgrim prayer his tented ears 
Strained to the warm absorption of that spirit 
Which finds in feeling first philosophy, 
In arts and culture that refine the soul, 
Man's first Messiah living and to be. 

How long he lay embalmed of that swift 

siege 
Of thoughts unutterable, but wood-nymphs 

knew, 
And they who chronicle the swart-ribbed Hours 
Which came upon the night and went again 
As hastening from a task that loved them not. 
How long in the profoundest laboring out 
Of these star-thoughted oracles that e'er 
The sylvan realm of Truth could travail forth. 
None now shall say ; but on that sunken eve 
There was a hand of motherly monition 
Staying all busy life in one meek hush, 
And not e'en Love's low luUiby was heard 
To press the teemed air. His spirit sank 
Deeper and deeper to that alien depth, 
Estranged e'en from his omnipresent self. 
Remote in that far phantasy from even 
The heavens that held him in their cloistered 

paims 
Childwise on a mother's breast ; and in that 

strain 



The Truth- God no 

The great-orbed sweats poured laboring adown 
His brow majestic and by hard compulsion 
Proved to the underlings of earth and sky- 
That even gods are chief but by their toils, 
And heaven one workshop of perfecting truth. 
Yea, his huge frame in that celestial moil 

Shook with volcanic travail, and 't was sweet 

Ah, sweeter than all the pomp-pursed legacies 
Of bounty-giving Era; for therein 
Was he thrice proved to his demanding self 
A god indeed— more than in name or knave. 

Then sudden as a cloud eclipses noon. 
There rose a din of voices to the reach 
Of that high region— paeans of huge thanks 
Half revelry half awe ; ah, then a hiss— 
A hush — subsidence into hell of all 
That boastful trump to heaven, and— silence ! 
Wherefore ?— ye gods. Hark ye! the child is 
born — 

First heir of Science and all-sovereign Truth 

Him whom the gods had surnamed Faiths 

Alas ! 
To find his godlike nature here unsexed, 
His birthright cast in hostage to the fiends. 
His head uncrowned and the high prestige 

fallen ! 

Then swept through the blind arcades of her 
courts 



loo The Truth-God 

In search of her grave lord, a matron: she, 
Crimsoned to th' beetling brows with traitor 

shame- 
Science, the mother on that liberal hour 
Of Doubt presuming to recoil on heaven, — 
He the exalted but to fall ; the king 
But to be slaved in turn ; o'er-flattered knave, 
With pompous pouch and lips all spendthrift 

smiles, 
Aye, Doubt bred of the breast that should 

have teemed 
A Faith-god on that solemn hour, — aye, Doubt 
With eyes like two small windows into hell. 
Sun-forged to light the glory of his lord, 
Prophet of that high tenure. Forth came she 
The mother of that shrunk and milken god — 
Out of her jaspar-chambered solitude, 
Skirted by one meek slave with wildered limbs 
Burdened of that high treasure so unprized. 
With bolting eyes swoU'n of dissentient tears, 
Did she — this rampant sister-spouse of Truth — 
Peer searchingly through every masked port 
And outskirt nave resisting ; then took she 
The thread of her bowed master's wandering. 
Trailing his giant footstep on and on, 
Through gallery and inter-clasping aisle. 
Through damask naves by dim torch rubied 

faint — 
Out into the dumb dusk of middle eve, 



The Trtith-God loi 

And rapped upon the gates. The warder leaped 
As from a tomb-deep slumber at the sound ; 
And forth they swung — those pond'rous seals 

to heaven, 
And she passed on. 

The forest as a rose 
Sprung from Hesperides at shut of eve 
With petals half impenetrable, stood there ; 
And on she plodded with but thankful moan 
That the befriending darkness hid her cheek 
From the beholding search of silent Truth 
Bridging her thus much anguish. Then in 

doubt, 
Upon the meek sods stood she halt a trice, 
And when the echoes of her silver tread 
Wasted away like Hope too fragile born, 
She called upon the forest's sensuous ear 
The name of 'Truth' — that solemn Region's 

god! 
And yet no answer came ; for he beyond, 
Devoured of that all-penetrating reach 
Of reason — super-logic of the gods, — 
Heard never outward sound, and so dreamt on. 
But forward still she ventured, and once more 
Lifted her voice upon the mobile air: 
* Truth Maximus ! — son of Johovah — hail ! ' 
But no ; that amorous wording swooned like 

Day 



I02 The Truth- Gdd 
i. «..«,....., 

On the black -armored Midnight, and she 

moaned. 
Then by some augured chance or will elect 
Siie trembled forth noting the riven port, 
And obdurate of speech one moment more 
Stood liegeless by her great lord's side, and 

bowed. 

The fever at his temples felt she keen 
As closer bent the reverent lips to press 
The brow out-heavened by that passion-dream 
Surpassing speech of e'en the elder gods. 
To trump him from his rhapsody. Ah, all 
Of that flood-tided motion of the sea 
Beneath his billowy bosom she w^ell knew — 
Reading that huge heart's oceanic swell 
As 'twere an open scripture of the stars. 
Then nerved to the calm pitch of her resolve, 
She pressed her hot lips to his forehead moist, 
Whisp'ring sweet salutations to his soul, 
Half -cloaking down her own rebellious mood. 
There rent a shudder through that giant 

frame, — 
A quick pulse that had stirred th' coagulate 

milks 
Of all the sluggish systems of the gods. 
And then by brawn compulsion to the task 
The great god snatched his spirit back within 
From that all-searchful reach, rising with pain 



The Truth-God 103 

As from a sepulchre of giant dreams 
A thousand years in solid cerements. 
Ah, then with tear-washed hands hard-clenched 

upon 
The emblem of his state, he measured forth 
The words that rang their requiems through 

heaven. 
And stung all quick creation halt with awe : 

"This — this the climax of sun-vaulting 

Thought — ! 
The pitch of the inspired — dome of true light ! 
The apex of ascendence where the god 
Relinquishing reason at its end of ends, 
Proceeds beyond by faith ! This — this the cap 
And crown on Truth's infinitude : the crest 
Of potent sky-craft — height of heights! Oh, 

could 
My spirit season out the reach of time 
O'er this sweet passion-madness ! Oh, to be 
Upon that utmost zenith pedestaled 
Forever, 'stead of sitting at the breach 
Of mysteries throned in the bowels of heaven, 
A name, an envy, lord of carrion moons 
And wormwood earths dismembered of their 

state. . . . 
Ah, Science ! what doth prompt thee from thy 

hall 
At this gloom-spoused hour ? — " 

Then up rose he, 



I04 The Truth- God 

And touched her hand with half impetuous stir 
Of mutual love, prying his query still. 
But timorous by daunt of fear, she shrank 
Stark of her valiance at the mooted edge. 
Speechless disarmed. Then he, the hiltedking, 
Perceiving her clenched to some rack of shame, 
Halt of inadequate tongue, spake eager thus : — 

"Wherefore shrink'st thou? — Oh Sister- 
spouse ; the truth! 
And if opprobrious that the listening day 
Blush on thy secret, break it on the night 
Confederate to thy purpose, and 't is welL" 

This sly enforcement worked its will, and by 
These wedgihg words struck to her sense again, 
That daughter of the mooting centuries 
Waved back the mantle from her matron brow 
As if 't were proved impolitic to seal 
Its open oracle from the lank shades. 
And by this new-taught chivalry, spake thus : 

" Son of Jehovah ! come thy spouse and child 
Greeting. ..." 

*' What ! Faith ?— he who shall bear to all 

mankind 
The secret by which are the gods made worthy, 
The heavens propped up, the heart of man 

?lect — 



The Truth- God 105 

The prestige of the pure, the wise, the true, 
Sustained ? Oh, Faith-child ! it is well with 
thee...." 

Then pressed he forth to seize this firstling- 
born 
Of Truth and Science in his eager arms ; 
But ere avowed, a quick restraining hand 
Halted him at the breach, and he stood still. 
Marvelling. 

" Nay ; not yet, O Truth-god. Stay ! 
Thy son by some mischance of hell is proven 
Unfit to meet thy gaze. Nay, question not ; 
Bethink thyself yet childless as to him, 
For he is not the worthy of his sire, — 
Unmeet the fostering. Thus Science pleads : 
That thou be not displeased ; but forthwith 

swear 
The sun-babe's future to his mother's will, 
Relinquishing to her all exercise 
Of discourse to the warrant of his state 
As she may deem most worthy. Pledge me 

this!" 

So sank the perfumed poison to the shades, 
Rewardless of his smile. With captious eyes 
Bestirred to pry the painted secret more. 
That paragon of states apporached the slave 
That stood beweathered of his boding aw^e, 



io6 The Truth-God 



And clasped the babe, biddidg the torch be 

bent 
That he behold and bless. Then bowing low, 
He knelt before the child, and eye to eye 
Those gods beheld their own. Thus lifting 

forth 
The index of his state, he murmured low 
With every reverent accent of esteem : — 

"First-born of Science — she my one soul's 
spouse — 
Of opulence God-fostered, co-eterne ! 
Thus to my heart I yoke thee: hence ordained 
The infant Truth, o'er-honored of his sire! 

But why, O Mother, dost thou tremble so ? — 
How now art goad of some irreverent mood 
Too passionate for rein ? Peace unto thee ! 
For Truth s well pleased of Science' infant son, 
Gracing him fit to mate the Attributes 
And serve the one all-King. Unbind the babe. 
And let him prove the mutual of heaven. 
Unbind the young god, slave, and let me look 
If all his limbs be stubborned of the oak. 
And brow broad-virtued of the wills of heaven 
As doth become a scion of the Law. 
What hast thou named him, Mother?" 

*' Named him ? — named him ? Of his nature 
damned — 
His godless, creedless, treasonable inbeing : 



The Truth' God lo^ 



' Doubt ' have I named him— Doubt that lifts 

to hell 
This pure libation he should kiss to thee 
O Truth ! before whom do the planets kneel— 
* Doubt' have I named him to his nature true." 

Then came a sigh— a curse— a murmuring, 
And the night-fiends dissembled, shadeward 

fled. 
There rose the huge Olympian, and shook 
His gauntlet locks up to the high-noon Fates, 
And turned his face starward, murmuring thus ; 

*'Oh fatal augury that plunges me 
Into submersion through this reach of joy 
And the sweet consecrations of this hope 
So grown auspiciou:^ to these grief-rheum eyes 
For my babe's sake ! What Doubt the son of 

Truth— 
Doubt the first-born of Science— Doubt the 

dog 
Whom I have kissed a god in mutual awe, 
But to be damned in the rebound. Alas! 
Was I born but to brook this stern reproof 
Of heaven, and father this wry-featured thing 
Throughout the cirque eterne ? Alas for me ! 
Is this the price of truth, O sovereign Jove? — 
Is Doubt the meed of Science, Art, and all 
These holy aspirations of young Mind 



io8 the Truth-Cod 

Godward ascendant through these mortal 

glooms ? 
Aye, God forbid!" 

Then Science with her frame 
Bowed as a gnarled oak beneath the yoke 
Of shame — unworthy, fiend-enslaven shame — 
Fell to the great god's side, snatching the babe 
Into the mazed air, and shrieked amain : 

"Thou beetling issue of the Arm of Light ! — 
Curt-vvitted interloper 'tvvixt this pride 
And me ! — hence, hence thou art athwart 
The hecate universe a fateling cast. 
Go ! pry thy refuge from the slaven Earth, 
And trespass the dumb Seas to quarter thee — 
Thou foster-child of the presuming Shades — 
Hence ! thou mal-formed and ominous debauch 
Of a sky-mated mother, — seek thy sphere ! " 

Then with a giant's task, she paced along : 
On till where heaven looks o'er its jutty brim 
Down on the austere under-arc of earth — 
E'en at the barbless brink remorseless poised 
Halting. Then ere the Fate-gods could for- 

fend, 
She clenched her girdless sun-child by the 

loins, 
Gathering huge purpose to that milken will, 
Hissing through the dumb arc her flaming 

curse, 



The Truth- God 109 

With one herculean plunge that bearded Night, 
She wrenched the rebel Doubt from her torn 

breast 
And flung him forth into the staggered calm 
Of speech more dreadful than a wind from 

hell,— 
Out of her bosom far into the night 
Which with all-sealing yawn drank down the 

mote 
As 't jvrere a meteorite, — a wail — a hiss — 
A speck that seemed to stick in th' painted void' 
And — nothing ! 



The Truth- God itt 



@h^ ©trwth-ClBjcih: 



BOOK SECOND. 



TJie Sea-throne of Sceptia. — Doubt confesses his 
Ambition to conquer Heaven. — The Banquet^ 
and the ascent of the son of Science to con- 
quest. 

Throned in her mid-morn temples of the sea, 
Deep-aliened from the increate of heaven, 
Castled with the dumb regents of the Tides — 
Those ocean-shouldering deities, supreme 
In all the crafts that snare the weals of men — 
There knelt a goddess, by adoption made 
The mother of our fallen Thunderbolt — 
Doubt, the banished from that seat of reign 
Whereon he would have served the hilt of 

Truth. 
There sate she pedestaled of sea-green state, 
Her yearning eyes bent on a far-off chase 
Of dreams that dared a pilgrimage to heaven 
And brought back homes of beauty aud of joy 
Wherein to castle the unhoused heart 
Reft of its holy faith. Ah, once she drew 



112 The Truth-God 

A cloak of jewelled sea-reeds o'er her neck, 
And bending, pressed her lips most lingeringly 
Upon that cheek yet soft with youthfulness, 
And wept, yet wherefore, not e'en herself knew. 

He slept — this young god of the Thunder- 
steed — 
Like one of mighty deeds whose valors take 
Scarce heed of th' maddest tribute of the gods 
To do him honor, so supreme are they. 
He slept, and ah, his dream like a devil's dream, 
Took shape presuming at the gates of heaven ; 
And him flung forth as rebel to the truth, 
Now flattered him his mother penitent 
Would clasp her star-child back into her realm, 
And crown him goldenly his seat of reign, — 
Doubt, sovereign and Messiah — super-truth 
By which alone the heart of man prevails. 
And as he dreamt upon his coral couch 
By Sceptia's hand woven to tenderest touch. 
His bosom fevered, and his trenchant eyes 
Spheried with rheum, those battlemented 

brows 
Fretted like mountain clouds that cap the Alp, 
To free young lightning waspish for new war. 
But when the goddess watching at his side 
Read those hard chronicles which stood dis- 
closed 
In open scripture on that speaking face, 



The Truth- God 113 

She shuddered as a mother for her child ; 
Nor dared an utterance though full at heart, 
So shrunk of passion is the ablest word 
To speak the rack of turmoil on the soul. 

Hope was a thing abandoned to the fiends 
In that sea-hermitage of calm Despair, 
O'er-reigning Hate and Sorrow — ministers 
Of her the unbelieving — for sun-sired Faith 
Was here but a harlot neutral, and the Arts 
And arms of all the soul doth cherish so 
As moving godwise the great heart of man, 
Descended to the abject of a curse, 
A mockery, a shame. But one thing lived 
And drank its breath of life from the Unknown, 
Serving a prop to these dead temples, and 
With swathing clouts wrapping the heart of 

man 
With aught forf ending his self-bred despair: 
And that was Sufferance. No faith was there ; 
Not so much trust in that eterne To-be 
Which lifts forth from the deeps of mortal moil, 
As dries one tear to vapor. Not so much 
Of God as would e'en tempt a starving breast 
To bear it to the warmth of the North Star 
For solace. Aye, Death lived not ; neither Life, 
Nor Hope, nor promise, nor the faith of saints; 
But stoic-bosomed Resignation bore 
AU there was semblance to a God of love. 



114 1^^^ Truth- God 

Christ was a myth ; the creeds were all un- 

sexed — 
Disjunctioned peacemeal with their gospel 

members 
Uncrucified, yet doomed to certain fall: 
Serving the champing-cud of scoffing things 
That cry to heaven that which the heart con- 
temns, 
Teasing to hell that which the gods applaud. 
Such was the throne of Sceptia : the first 
The last of all mankind's philosophers. 

Resuming thence her early attitude, 
The mobile goddess shrank into the depths ; 
And with a questioning sigh, a sign she made 
To the attendant sea-sprites, and alone, 
With brow dissembled of its shaken poise. 
Watched long and keen with tenderest earnest- 
ness 
For that young god's recoiling spirit. 

Yet, 

It came not back from its impassioned trance. 
And she grew jealous of his very dreams. 
The brazen Noon with moulten wing flung 

down 
Her fiery mantle o'er the captious wave, 
Piercing it to the pillars of the sea ; 
Down, down athwart this mountain-bosomed 

couch 



The Truth' God 115 

Through the wedged arc of Sceptia's domain, 
Domed by its watery heaven of purple waves, 
It came as on a pilgrimage, and sought 
This lorn-browed hermit at her sunken shrine 
Prostrate half-anguished as a sacrifice 
To that exalted eminence. On high. 
From the transparent prism of the noon, 
Hung stalactites of sea-brine jewels made 
When breathed on by the nymphs, all chan- 

deliered 
With hues that held their beauty with a pang 
Of over-strained luxury, and thus 
From these celestial lamps flung through the 

deeps 
That wizard halo wooing Beauty o'er 
Till all the void waxed green by sweet disease 
Of jealousy e'en of the gods* applause. 

Before her in a purpled incense hid, 
Her altars rose like an ethereal moon 
Risen on hell out of some black Unknown — 
Rose and amazed stood, as half ashamed 
To trespass on such stately hearth with bald 
And naked front barbaric ; but when fell 
The incense that enmantled it, that shame 
Was changed into an unction of the soul. 
Darkling with weirdest glamours and sad 

spells 
The reach of th' craven void. There sate she 

bowed — 



ii6 The Truth-God 

This oracle God-hilted of the sphere 
Zoned of the billows, undismayed by Time, 
Or any sovereignty of griefless Ind, 
Or Occident of all unravished orbs 
In her austere prerogative of gloom ; 
Brow like a pale-brown cloud that sits aloft 
Some haughty crag ; chin like a temple-base 
With hugest step whereon a god might mount 
To th' portal-eyes ; with pallid lids that fell 
Upon her still, half-clenched eyes like cold 
And dampen cerements that wrap the dead ; 
And parted lips as if the yawn beyond 
Wherein sweet guile mothered its siren speech, 
Had proven many a hero's hell. Her hair, 
Curtaining with wreathing gossamers of gold 
Those shoulders marmorial as the fleckless 

noon. 
Blush-misted of immortal youth and fair- 
Hung like a galaxy of shooting stars 
Pendant from heaven by their fiery tails ; 
While on her knees the trident stood command 
As if some sky-god snatched a meteor 
From out the cratered sun in sacrifice 
To so much empire, and with reverend grace 
Had laid it there. Her signal robe of state 
Was woven of pied and vermeil reeds whicli 

once 
Were the Jove's lightnings flung from heaven 

down 



The Truth- God n; 



To lash the rebel waves, and there were 

changed 
Into these phosphor threads she gathered up 
To fashion into garment. Thus sate she 
All-motionless as her pale-orbed domain : 
A link 'twixt two wide-wedged eternities, — 
A bride, but even so in widowhood, 
Crushing the pallid hues that came and went 
Like light snows fallen on the liectic leaf 
In autumn-tide, melting as rose the sun. 

She bit her lip in anguish — this bent seer 
Of thoughts that held speech an abhorrent 

thing 
Of profanation to its heat — aye, bit 
The purple crescent till it shone blood-red. 
And like a horned moon it seemed to pierce 
Th' alarm-cloud that hung 'twixt that search- 
ing feature 
And him it gazed on with confessing eyes, 
Who lay dream-pillowed at her very feet 
As some tired palmer from the nadir seas. 
Ah me! what silence full of oracles 
Was that. She loved him ; but that love 

poured out 
Its feasting attribute through the one port 
By which her nature ruled the sons of men : 
She loved him but to doubt him ; and where 
love 



ii8 The Truth-God 

Most reinless ravaged, there made doubt its 

home, 
Its province, hot-bed, and its hell. She rose, 
Ah, then drew back, and bound her mocking 

lids, 
List'ning that galled breath with chaffed con- 
tent. 
The young god's spirit pilgrimed back again 
From that far reach of aery humors capped. 
Back from that dream-sired cynosure of heaven 
And took up calm abode on those warm eyes; 
So slowly waking with an easeless quiver 
About that stubborn mouth, and crossing 

sweats 
Upon that forehead ribbed of titan zeal, 
He half arose and clenched those iron palms, 
Bearding most bold the unpropitious deeps 
With thunderbolt on thunderbolt that lashed 
The coward whiles into submission tame. 
Thus spake the Doubt-god, and the riot fiends 
Ac sport o'er human frailty, gave ear : 

"Ye Hours that rise into swart dynasties, 
Each chief by birthright ! — ye of kingliest bane 
The sole compounders !-- -I do pity ye 
Of such lame reason mothered, and so sired 
Of still-born weal, and triumph that the dogs 
Of downfall addle with their nightly spume! — 
Oh bubble casuistry the purjured gods 



The Truth- God 119 

Resolve men's deeds upon ! this is the state 
That marks the signal epochs wherein Earth 
Lies reinless of her self-ambitioned chase 
For that which long hath proved but a mad- 
man's myth, — 
That God is, and the soul of man immortal. 
This is the state that marks the fall of Faith 
To Erebus ; the rise into the heaven 
Of Selfdom the ascendant man ! Could we 
But bribe the heavens to question, the heavens 
Would fall. A single itching doubt will mutine 
In th' trunks of even gods and there unhouse 
A whole republic of the sovereign truth. 
I must to heaven ; 't is late. I must to heaven 
And topple the fair womb that gave me birth. 
Science ! — O Science ! art thou not still my 

mother ? 
Am I not still thy first-born and thy heir ? 
Wherefore didst cast me war^ton to the fiends 
A fateling on the charities of men, 
Forsooth that thou wouldst please thy tyrant 

God 
With some sick minion with ethereal eyes 
And womanish members and a silken will 
'Stead of a Titan with grip of flint 
That could tlie belted Neptune wrench peace- 
meal 
From his blue sockets, tossing him to hell. 
Oh who shall shall mete the power of a doubt 



I20 The Truth-God 

To put the stars in swaddling-rags ; to blur 
The bloated sun and lash his craven neck 
Down through the farmost deeps of nadir night 
And serve some star a menial satellite ; 
To paint with glooms the festering face of 

noon ; 
Dampen the heart of man w^ith sackcloths dipt 
In teasing hemlock ; strike from th' face of 

Truth 
That smile benignant, his high prestige thieve, 
And with its capable grip, rise forth and start 
The whole red universe on a mad chase 
Back to the primal hearthstone of all time, 
And Anarch reign once more. Alas for me! 
What wonders 'passing all conceived of Gods 
Or men would come ail-sovereignly to pass 
If but a Doubt ruled heaven." 

So spake the mood 
Of this young-hearted mutineer given o'er 
To counterplot against the matron will 
That proved him traitor to the arm of Truth. 
Then gathering to his sense the far-off reach 
Of rhapsody, he turned and there beheld 
His sponsor at his side ; and over-awed 
One quickened moment by her burning look, 
Outstretched his palm, and spake : 

*' Sweet Mother mine! 



The Truth- God 121 

Since she who nursed me puny-proof to fate— 
I had a dream, which, by the absolute 
And paramount decrees, I am adjudged 
Meet my great mother's audience. And now 
By all the oaths of the resolved gods, 
I would lay manifest most reverently 
My fealty propitious to thy palms. 
Command the quickened depths of ocean 

quake 
With all-devout humility, and pour 
Their prayers to thunders adequate. Sweet 

friend 
If I have grown to weave about thy soul 
A castle of content of love-reeds thatched, 
Invisible yet all-enduring, and 
Within this sanctuary housed my heart, 
'T is but to do thee honor, and regain 
For thy fair sake the empire of my due. 
Aye, though 1 go, my heart shall here abide 
To do thee service at thy menial nod 
And beck ; and all my prostrate, suppliant soul 
Thus metamorphosed to holy censer. 
Swing up to heaven the perfume of thy love. 
Dost thou believe ? " 

A moment's pause fell there ; 
And the chilled season of her brooding passed 
With those peer pleadings, Sceptia dashed 
aside 



122 The Ti'iith-God 

The plumed haught of her dissembling state, 
And stood trumped at his feet. Lifting then 
A voice half venturing on that giant's task 
To free immortal love through woman's lips 
When gods stand halt of language, thus spake 

she, 
And all earth knelt respect : — 

"Great son of Truth 
And that resistless matron of the breach 
Betwixt the parted stars ! I greet thy words — 
Ah, why need I dissemble? — why but yield, 
And turn my heart to things all-tangible 
Unto thy kissing trust ? O gentlest youth ! 
I bore thee from the billows where from heaven 
Thy puny bulk was cast a fateling dice, 
To sink or swim, so curse or honor God. 
Yea, with a reason in this madness mine, 
I caught thy mother's hostage unto hell 
Ere it scarce slipped the verge ; and that was 

thou. 
I nursed thee as my own. I bred thy bones 
The marrow of omnipotence ; I strung 
Thy veins taut with a god's desire till each. 
Like harp-strings whereupon the passions 

played. 
Flung forth a siren music ; aye, I teemed 
Thy young Ambitions on the predal wine 
Of that black grape that trellises the walls 



The Triiih-God 123 

Of fiend-most hell, — and all, alas for me ! 
Even in the warm mid-zenith of my love — 
Now in the godmost ardors of my zeal,' 
Thou hast a dream — a mad, mal-visioned dream 
Full of the properties of headlong youth 
By which e'en gods have fali'n, — a dream of 

myth 
Flattered all tangible to youthful eyes — 
A dream of empire, of some fever-fit 
Conditioned, yet so plausible withal 
That I turn rebel 'gainst my own love-rite, — 
Robbing the altars whereon I have laid 
Myself in hostage thine. Speak thou to me ; 
Wouldst thus to leave me widowed as the 

night 
And wear as Stygean veils ? " 

The young Doubt-god 
Drew down his fretful forehead fold on fold 
Of wrinkled eloquence, and dared a voice ; 
But words — they swooned upon his strucken 

lip, 
Melting thus stillborn into sighs. Then bowed 
With stubborn stare all motionless of state, 
With twisted palms, and steel-cold eyes that 

shone 
Like two white nails sunk in a coward's coffin. 
He sat. A sea-nymph from tlie whiles beyond. 
Came fortli, and with a hand inviolate. 



124 "^^^^ Truth- God 

Proffered him a cup which shudderingly 
Rattled upon his parted teeth, as then 
With one swift draught the flagon wineless fell 
With fragile crash upon the beryl floors. 
Then with a word that fell a thousand leagues 
Short of the thought's ambition, Jie spake soft, 
Dareless of lifted eyes : — 

" Thou talk'st of love, 
And love that makes e'en children of the gods, 
Makes e'en a babe of me ; disarming so 
This adamantine yoke that I am halt — 
Thieved even of my birth-right attribute 
By which the blush of fevering gratitude 
Is far out-tempered of its judgment calm. 
Speak not of love, O guardian Goddess, nay ; 
The universe is schooled in thy love-ethics, 
And with the least of mortals, so am I. 
My heart, far out its iron element, 
Throbs thy warm creed of love, and all is 

thine. 
But think how far dismembered from my state 
This propless, hiltless arm estranged lies ! 
Think — think how craven base in me to sleep 
The flabby slumber of the opium-dog. 
And see these taut ambitions suckle hopes 
The hounds of Custom make dear play- 
things of ! 
Words cowardize this will to cope with gods ; 



The Truth- God 125 

Only the deed can prove it up to heaven. 
Thus let me wordless dream ; and when the 

hour 
Is ripe, then let a giant's deed take up 
The staff of th' giant's fallen dream, and do ! " 

So spake the Doubt-god ; and the leagued volt 
Of empire fell athwart that thunder-zone, 
Till all the deeps were hushed. Then without 

once 
Relinquishing the theme, he ventured on, 
Thus half belying the resolved mood : — 

"Think of my birth and all it must redeem 
Before the just expectancies of Time 
Which yet shall see this curdling pap of 

heaven 
Called * faith * out-ridden to the scorns of hell. 
By just rebellion 'gainst this scurved state, 
And Him who brought it forth and now would 

force 
Poor trodden -hearted mortal to redeem 
His blunders — ah, think thou of all the task 
Imposed upon this mind by naked hand 
Of heaven's most indurate ! Oh tell me then, 
By all the principals that point the stars 
To their empyreal freedoms, must I sleep 
The orbits of so great a planet through, — 
Abide my menial picket as a moon 



126 The Truth- God 

That steals light but to fling it as a curse 
Down on some darkling, ghashing mortals' 

earth, 
And list their childish thanks ? Oh, say not so ; 
But by the orb compound upon thy soul 
The antidote for such a passion's bane, 
And let me free my mission ! " 

This spake he 
As one who rose from some carnationed urn 
Brimmed of the sweats of Titans in their moil 
To wedge a world to orbit ; then reclined 
With naked shoulders on a sea-moss pillow, 
Breathing like Centaur from a season's chase. 
Meanwhile the deeps so stunned of the brawn 

throb 
Of this o'er-passioned speech, seemed gather- 
ing up 
Their fragments in alarm ; while too, there rose 
From out the mouthed shells girting this 

shrine, 
A minstrelsy of timid venturing. 
Such as might traquillize too arduous stir 
Upon the heart of Sceptia. Then rose 
That solemn presence from her coral throne, 
And glided sisterly his armored side, 
Pressing her fingers to his hollow cheek 
In yearning admonition. Then gave o'er 
That matron problem that had weighed her so ; 



The Truth- God 127 



And with an impulse swift as was the check 
A moment gone, to search his own conceit, 
And foster pride e'en in a gorgon's throat, 
She spake with measured majesty : — 

"Tis well; 
How dare I fell a forest in the rift 
Betwixt thee and thy heaven, to tease thy wit 
And counter thine ambition ? Shame 'pon me, 
That I so leagued my love to rend thy path 
With chasms thou canst span not, but to be 
The sole embalmer of thy thought and deed 
Which are to me my immortality. 
Go, Monarch of the armories of Jove ! — 
Traduce the elements till they out-armed, 
Minion thy majesty ! Go, while thine eyes 
Dilate to conquest ; go, dam up the rent 
Made by thy soul's dethronement infamous, 
And let the harlot Circumstance that felled 
Thy temple to the fiends, now champ the lash. 
Wincing down to the socket. Empire thine ! 
The top of skiey state— the apex chief 
Of all sun-pillared capitols of space !— 
These seat in the prefigurement ; while all 
This under-weaned malignance of the shades, 
And Eartli and all her warring creeds of faiths 
And faction, and the prophets of mankind,— 
Give hostages of golden augury 
Unto thy precedence. On, Doubt !— on, on. 



.128 The Truth- God 



And rib the universe with thy right arm, 
Till suns turn allies, and yon grave star-seers 
Stand shoulder to shoulder panoplied in war 
To wrench a port atween the ribs of heaven 
And pry thee in. Yet shalt thou rule the 

main — 
Thou First, thou Last, thou All supremely 

armed 
By precedent, by nature, and by zeal 
Upon my trust and love still shalt thou rule — 
Yet shall a doubt rule heaven !...." 

So sank her words from that eruptive throat 
Down through the mindless orataries caved 
In the mid-oceans-bulks that know no sun. 
Then took she motherly m her warm palms 
The young god's fingers ; and with heart 

revealed, 
Pressed them unto her lips devotional 
Till love grew numb with love reciprocate. 
Then knelt she, — ah, weird Priestess of the 

sea — 
Before her new-found altar, and laid bare 
Her bosom like a sea of phosphor pearl, 
Unravished yet of human touch, sinking 
His face upon her breast at 't were a pyx 
To shield her from reversal fates. Then he, 
Recovered of spirit to that calm refrain, 
Spake soothestly : — 



The Truth- God 129 



" O Mother !— the elect 
Of all my spirit sovereign by thy love — 
Since that pomp-pedestaled debauch of heaven 
Which did beget so halt a brute as I, 
Forswore the common pity of a snake 
For her own jeopardized — wake from thy 

dreams ! 
Lift — lift thy realmed look, O Queen ! and 

take 
My weal to heart more consecrate to reason 
Than thus to serve thy prostrate passion's will ! 
Lift up thy second, — thy profounder self 
Above this green-sick hour ; those futures play 
To an immortal seeing of Love's self, 
And treasuring its truth as second God ! " 

Up from the huge o'er-jutty chancel base 
Of that wide deep-sea sanctuary, came 
Those priestesses of Sceptia's sea-court. 
To trim the tapers, and make ready all 
The feasts of parting and the vigils' rite 
Wherein the prophets their rich off rings lay 
With paeans swept felicitously low. 
And now a daughter of the Ocean-seer, 
A conch-eyed maiden, stirred with civil step 
From the young Doubt-god's presence, and 

was lost 
To his beleaguered eyes in the mid maze 
Of labyrinthine columns shouldering up 



130 The Truth- God 

The sovereign sea, e'en as the yoked Atlantes 
Prop the blue eaves of heaven. Then he bowed 
Upon a rubied ottoman, throwing down 
His languid frock like some pale-twilight cloud 
Cameleon-hued in ripest summer tints — 
Down on his sober brow's horizon wide» 
Clenching his lids from every allied sight, 
Braving the peer-most reach of flattering hope 
In all the gods* imaginings. 

Still, still 
He sat, cloaking his staid heaven-driving eyes, 
Like fiend a-quiver with some parched re- 
morse 
Wordless and tongueless save the eloquence 
Of crampen sweats and sinews taut with strain. 
And now those tremblings ceased ; and meek 

of eye. 
He half uprose and crossed his fettered cheek 
With an uhbolting sign, and forth there came 
As from some troublous deep beneath his 

heart. 
Those captive oracles with shame-eyed miens 
As if their dignity was stung to wrath 
By such rewardless thraldom. Long he paused 
With livid lip all haughty turbulence. 
And eyes dilate with gloating some sky-prize. 
Then fierce that young frame grew ; and forth 
like fire 



The Truth- God 13 1 



From ^Etna's clamorous broil, the arrowy 

words 
Sprang to the throat of the unthinking silence, 
Moving the quick mood thus : — 

" Ye churl-sired Hours ! — 
By rankling shames so seasoned since that 

morn 
This mal-apportioned fall made dog of me, 
And on this wrath nursed scorpions, to bait 
And nettle it into barbaric heat ! 
Down, down! thou twin-born rudiment of 

hell— 
Thou voice of babe-betrayal — down ! and let 
My secret pry apart the ribs of heaven, 
Mutine that void celestial, and upon 
The carrion heaps of conquered gods and 

kings. 
Castle my pride, and so proclaim Doubt 

Truth ! 

Let cowards rhapsodize. Deeds be my boast — 
Not dreams ; the eloquence of action — not 
The uncreated vision, be my heaven ! 
O ye poor underlings of sweet conceit — 
Pale negatives of Nature — ye dream-fags! 
Triumph sits blushing on thy Godvvard lids. 
Sighing to make thee confidants if but 
The soldier's heroism here supplant 
The dreamer's dream ; for, ah me ! what is hell 
But dreams unrealized ! " 



132 The Truth- God 

So sank that voice 
With rebel hiss on the supporting cahn, 
So stifling up all ears to alien noise. 
Then sat he long with face all crimson-barred 
And lips a-quiver, heeding not that she, 
His mother by her charities ordained, — 
The pearl-embowered Sceptia, stood near, 
Watching with ardent eye her child-lover 
Whom she had cradled into peerest things 
Her fond co-autocrat. Then as there fell 
From his impulsive front a jewelled crest 
Cyphered of strangest import, he upturned 
His lustrous eyes and there beheld his queen 
With smile that well would grace the maiden 

Morn 
From her carnationed lips at bud of day. 
Then without words she took his clenching 

palm 
And drew him onward as a truant child. 
Over the jaspar lengths of limpid floors, 
He with a stubborn step and heart ill-eased 
To bait his spirit from its madness back, 
Snailing most mincingly, — on, on apace, 
Down 'tween these columns ancient as the sea. 
Writhing as one of savage secrets warped 
Beyond all recognition. There they paused 
Ere venturing upon that banquet hearth 
Where sat festivity in waiting, crowned 
Propitious to the brows. E'en at her side 



The Truth-God 133 

Wordless the dream-seized god stood pon- 
dering, 
Just where he pressed the tiger's effigy 
Locked in the grim mosaic. Sceptia then 
With equal grace her quiet finger laid 
Upon that brow with crossing wrinkles whet 
Beyond his callow years, and cheerly spake, 
Admonishing : — 

" O Prince! repair thy zeal ; 
Leave off this signal lust for empire 'mid 
These rash impossibles to youthful arms ; 
For thou beard'st even now the keeps of joys, 
Where the most festal and conspiring throng 
To mirth await thee. Come ; lift up these 

locks 
From their uneasy gloom-offended brow ! 
What ! hear'st not even now the awkward din 
For thy slow coming ? Do not the gods ache 
To grasp good will the Doubt-god's open 

palm? 
On, Son of Truth ! on, on to feast. Unpoise 
This mammoth frown that cramps thy fore- 
head so ; 
Come ; wilt thou be of them an equal cheer 
In these o'er-flattering revels?" 

" Let me try ; 

And if I fail to follow on the heels 

Of these their honors with a giant deed 



134 The Truth-God 

To mate each gracing cup, then Chaos take 
These coward loins to task, and make a clay 
Of this fall'n immortality. So be it!" 

Thus 
With accents chivalrous clinging his lip. 
He tossed his mantle with a taunting stroke 
About his form defiant, and bent forth 
Upon the captious task — entering. 

Oh freest phantasy of eastern muse 
All meteor-yoked to grasp the capable hilt 
Of willing eloquence ! where is thy word ? 
How now is speech in surfeit awe halt bound, 
And honest voicing to that able mood 
Shrunk to the licence of the merest mote — 
Dumb, beholding there what these gods be- 
held ! 
Lo ! in the ruddy midst of all, there stood 
Pavilioned by an arch of gleaming pearl. 
The banquet tables of these Ocean-gods 
Met in this capitol of courtesy 
Laden with such vast favor of the gardens 
That bed the seas and cap their saffron heights 
That Doubt encompassed stood thus to behold 
And feast the rapturous dish. On, on he crept. 
While Sceptia took his hand bidding him haste 
Into that wild assemblage, and grace back 
The gallantries of the applauding host 



The Truth-God 



135 



There Query sat with super-bounden eyes ; 
And by her Pessimus, her love and brother, 
With visage faithful to the oracle, 
And attitude commanding. Then Sophism, 
Bearded of ancient cut, yet with the times 
Most consonant ; he the gripping seer 
With eyes in every pore that speak opinion 
E'en in the face of heaven. Then further on, 
Sat Cant with spangled locks tiera-like 
Domed sovereignly upon that milk-warm brow, 
Leaning on shepherd's staff that half the world 
Have kissed and sworn allegiance. Then came 
The Vanities, full of heart-qaking dreams ; 
Those daughters fair of sunlight and of shadow, 
Of grief and folly over-chastened thrice. 
Queen each of some imperial vantage-place 
Upon the willing heart of man wherein 
Sly-castied they discoursed the public man 
To deeds intemperate. Then Reason, sire 
Of the unrefuged Wonder houseless still 
As any beardless satellite, him set 
By crampen heel e'en in the joy-most place, 
With eyes that fed on marvels as each jest 
Were mettled of some browed philosopliy. 
Then Pretence, mantled of some lithest robe 
Torn from a serpent's back ; Rebellion, too, 
Of rugged jaw and lineament of war. 
Looking invasion in the yawn of hell. 
And many, many more — all swallowed up 



136 The Truth' God 

In this huge riot of convivial grace, 

With laughs, and cheers, and groans, as moved 

to voice 
The madness of their mood, themselves un- 
heard 
E'en by their listening selves. Oh, what a vast 
And venerable assemblage was here met, — 
Joy-wanton dignities of every clime. 
And outer-province of the heart of man. 
Gathered to lay their amorous salutes 
In young Doubt's lap, and cheer the roused 

god 
In his new-found resolve. Then sate he 

there, 
A giant in the peermost midst of such. 
Brimmed of conceits in purpose till they swore 
Their heavy moils on his reliant arms. 
Fevering the heart as with a wine run red 
From ^Etna's moulten arteries a- flame. 
And soon, too, at the hope of Sceptia's love. 
That frown of over-thought and mien of war 
Forsook the youngling aspect ; and instead. 
There knelt before his vision dreams of tri- 
umph 
And sanguine auspices he dreamt far, far 
Estranged from such a martyrdom of pride — 
From such a pillory of culprit Hours, 
yVnd Aspirations dragging fiery chains 
Down, down his galled temples. 



The Truth- God 137 



Ah, then forth 
From depths enmazed in smokes of revelry 
And pomp of perfumed censers-shells, there 

came 
The sea-slaves of th' Atlantian gods, bent down 
By weight of one huge pearl-engirdled urn 
Brimmed rash to th' quivering ledge with rev- 
elry 
In ruby mask. This, when the 'plauding din 
Had died, they set in their beholden midst 
Upon a porphyry casket opal-zoned 
And spiced with a precious union, dipping 

therefrom 
The liquid levity that ran their veins 
With hot Elysium, transporting them 
Into the fiatt'ring reach where greater gods 
Than these would named themselves out- 

heavened far. 
Then through the din multiloquence, there 

rose 
A god — a stranger in their mammoth midst — 
Custom, a waning deity with yet 
A feature of its m.atron curse unscathed 
From that familiar forehead, yet a king 
To millions, — rose he struggling up, and with 
His flagon reeling on th' commandant air, 
Drew down a calm much as a nymph of night 
With mantle dun folds o'er the sun's red look 
And heralds th' calm of eve, and thus his 
words 



138 The Truth-God 

Took sceptre on the anarch din : — 

*' Sweet friends ! — 
Creators even of Creation's self — 
Ye chaos-seekers whom your lineage 
Proves to the matron universe a will 
By godlike workmanship from void upheaved 
Into triumphant noon ! — ye gods of high 
And sure possession in the light of Thought ! 
Oh say with me this is no empty hour 
By Failure bred the age's malady, 
But open in its health, and super-bound 
To high fulfilment in the face of Law. 
O Doubt-god ! our young Doubt-god ! — palm- 
er made 
By such a feasting of auspicious cheer, 
Full worthy the most sovereign eminence 
Throned on the heart of man ! Oh art thou 

now 
Full armed upon thy zeal to overmatch 
The peerest import of the wield of heaven, 
And so not earth alone, but every star 
That touches cups to heaven and to Truth, 
And every sun that wags a fiery tongue 
Down the dumb oratories of intestine night 
Discoursing golden homily, — all, all 
Bow down and take thus to the fawning lip 
Thy flaming garment's hem, and cry thee God ? 
And art thou now full armed to conquer down 



The Truth- God 139 

The war-gods of all space who adamant 
Their armors with the attributes of Power 
And precedent thou dream'st not of, and there 
Strike flinted suns to flame, and girdle up 
Ten thousand earths into one Milky Way? 
Come ; hast thou pondered in the valid pitch 
Of thy madcap emprise, the awful task ? 
Speak, speak, O Doubt-god. Lo ! the vital air 
Is all a-hungered for thy voice " 

He paused 
For quick reply ; but ah, how far mistook 
The queried council the rich dignity 
Of such a stalwart mind which grappled heat 
By labor, but when once enkindled, fierce 
In its volcanic fervor and resolve. 
Then grew the silence ponderous ; and slow 
The travail of that mind to fill the gap 
Upon his heart with gracing utterance, 
Prevailed ; and he arose all-apt and free 
As from a sepulcher of his dead self, 
A new-born parent of a new-born will, 
And emulation multiplied in hope 
And daring dauntless. All concentring eyes 
Scanned that fair face for the betrayal blush ; 
But all was mystery unfathomed yet 
By even her who knew him, and she wept. 
Then back he waved a pace, his potent length 
Towering Colossus-matched, and put to shame 



14© The Truth- God 

The image yon of Delphian Apollo 

By grave repute ; and with half- stanched 

blush, 
Gazed wordless on their upturned faces all. 

The oracles that tongueless teased his heart 
To worthy utterance wrote on his brows 
Their solemn purport ; and when such was 

read 
By ail the peers of that rich lineage, 
There, rose a din of plaudits that made quake 
The earless naves of that sub-ocean realm, 
Pouring a conscious courage from the deeps 
Of thrice ten thousand unrestrained wills 
Into that sad soul's urn, and brewed therein 
A potion of rare poise. 

Then soldier-like, 
Down from his beetling shoulders fell the 

cloak 
That bore the wizard craft of Sceptia, 
Which as her benediction she had thrown 
Athwart his giant front awhile he slept ; 
And with a leopard-eyed resolve, and voice 
Like some lone Titan by his family 
Of angel-fallen round the hearth of hell. 
Spake forth with martial tongue : — 

" Ye proven slaves 
To over-faith in this reluctant arm ! 



The Truth' God 141 

Ye are too gravely schooled in honesties 
To spur me down into the yawn of fate 
Defeated. But behold — ye argus-eyed ! 
Pierce ye that thin transparency that kisses 
The hem of heaven, and swings a bulwark 

staid 
Twixt gloating Earth and the Olympian arc ? 
Oh see ye not crouched by the border-realms 
Of that unbearded State, a meteor-thing 
Upwaging through the serene films of dawn 
To some apt end ? Ah, Prophets ! know ye 

not 
That certain warrior-armored, godlike thing 
Is my aspiring spirit ? Hail it, gods ! 
Hail it with kiss of cheer, else fall it must ! 
Say ye with paltroon cattle of the earth, 
Mine is a lower circle? Say with men, 
He is no more than mortal, and for shame ? 
Was I but fashioned for a bootless king 
Of but a slavish world ? Oh, say not so ; 
Lo ! I was cast out of the clenched gates 
Where yet a son shall knock with dauntless 

dare, 
Demanding quarter none shall dare deny. 
In two-fold penance for so edged a deed. 
Snatch back thy heaven, thou Soul of purple 

ire 
Bent hoar by such indignities ! Sweet gods ! 
By all the regent stars : now fare ye well. 



142 The Truth-God 

When I shall conquer Heaven as I have Earth, 
And doubt of its God rules the wide universe, 
Count ye a claim co-equal with my triumuph, 
A synod of the all-compelling Arm — 
Gods by first chiefdom. Hence am I un- 
bound !' 

So saying, he bent down and reverently 
Took Sceptia in his arms and gave her one 
Wild look that made the stunned assembly 

stare ; 
Yet she interpreted as flooding full 
The coffers of her love with gratitude, 
Doing for her sweet honor these strange deeds. 
Then while applause sat lingering at each lip. 
Embalming the swift speech immortally, 
With up-poised arms he strode from the vast 

throng 
Followed of panting eyes and wildered shrieks 
All mingling doubts and darings. Out he sped 
Into the pulseless marrows of the sea. 
Fearless as sightless in the arc of night. 
Mounting his sea-steeds flame-caparisoned 
Yoked twain with girds of sea-nymphs' tresses 

woven, 
With riot-breathing throats and lightning 

manes 
Trailing like meteors through the crouching 

calm. 



The Truth-God 143 



Then leaning forward as to beard his task 
With iron stubborned volt, he uttered shriek 
That stunned the solid night, then upward 

plunged — 
Up, up through the unclenched, unravished 

deep. 
A phosphor wake from his hard-sunken spurs 
Flashed through the curdling element, and lo! 
From his beleaguered watchers he waged on 
Like an aspiring comet through the gates 
Of heaven stealing with a fire-brand 
To wring foul mischief at that seat of Power, 
A spectre of the gods — a flash — a hush — 
Gone ! 



144 The Truth-God 



®h« ®trttth-®l;^^: 



BOOK THIRD. 



The Truth' God at variance with his subject 
realm. — Science attempts to appease him; but 
in vain. — He threatens^ and finally attemptSy 
to cast her from her Throne to Earth ; but 
at the verge is halted by the advent of her 
first-born. — The final fall of Doubt. 

Morn, like a benignant vestal's veil, fell soft 
Upon the brow of Truth who stood apart 
From all the turmoils of his solemn court, 
Conjuring the affianced stars to speed 
Their daily off'rings to their regent god 
By the auspicious Day. But though he plead 
Upon the rebel clouds about his crown, 
Which rose from censers goldenly and bore 
His prayers in chariots argentine through 

space. 
The wry stars passive stood as half disloyal 
To their high regent, neutral to his hest. 
And not one subject law but led revolt 



The Truth- God 



145 



Full in the teeth of the preponderant god, 
And trumped the Powers 'gainst their resolved 

liege. 
It seemed the universe had taken arms 
Against its Sovereign, hounded by some spell 
Of doubt and damned rebellion, as, mayhap, 
Grown weary of this captious servitude 
To heaven. In vain as he the Truth-god stood 
E'en at the open port commandant still, 
He struck his clenched and obdurate right arm 
Upon the rebel elements, and heard 
His plead caressing and his thunder-curse 
Alike repulsed with muttering mutiny 
Which augured ill for tlie up-dawning Day. 
In vain he ope'd his eyes upon the browed 
And gaping heavens with most incautious ire, 
And rashly whipped a volt of lightning lash 
Athwart its naked front, and saw, alas ! 
A rainbow of most hell-soothsaying hues 
Blood-tinct and hideous, frowing like fiend 
Defiant through prison-bars. The very light 
Of day seemed poisoned of some mammoth 

curse. 
Stung to the vitals by some scorpion spell 
Slunk out of Hades to rile up the cup 
Of gracing heaven and turn its wine to gall. 
The very marrows of wrath-seizing space 
Broiled with brood-red indignity, and all 
The comet-cloven areas of Time 



146 The Truth-God 

Were dungeoned up in spleens that none mis- 
took, 
And none — not even he their monitor — 
Dared trifle or impugn. O martyred Hours ! 
When all celestial law breeds mutiny 
'Gainst their pride-stubborned and despotic 

chief, 
And the swart veins of that imperial brow 
Stood coursing over frown and furrow like 
Red serpents fanged with hatred to the brim 
And maledictive aching for revenge 
For that unquestioned deed of infamy 
Wrung on the palms of the defaulting First. 

He stood — this lord cribbed of his reinless 

wrath 
Embalmed in th' midnight of embittered 

spleen, 
Even a child in impotence of ire — 
A babe 'midst all these serfdom principles 
Whose kiss stung of the gall on his hot cheek. 
Who hissed their hymns perforce of th' dogged 

lash. 
With eyes upon the zenith taut he stood, 
Charging the whiles to problem out the why 
Of this mad, most irreverent revolt ; 
But even these whom he had honored, turned 
Denying from his face, and all the more 
He pierced with keen conviction the blue orbs 



The Truth- God 147 

That brazen- featured of reproach bent down 
Defiance deep into his swollen sockets, 
The more his caustic glance was met full- 
armed 
Of dragon ire whipped itchingly for war. 
Thus stood the Truth-god with half-wildered 

frame 
Bowed down, forsooth, as if one great as he 
Might know the grief that curst ingratitude 
Wrings on the generous heart ; as if, indeed. 
The god immortal with the mortal man 
Oft' touch their cups to Sadness. Thus he 

stood, 
With baffled shame on his insulted pride 
Pricking deep wounds ; and thus he set his 

teeth 
Like leopard meditating mischief high, 
Choked back the curse that would, and wept 

aloud — 
Yet wherefore, dared not wonder. 

Then anon. 
Sweet Zephyrs with warm censers in their eyes 
With spiced fragrance in their every look. 
Came kneeling at his feet, and with low lutes 
Began their humble paean ; but he hissed, 
Much as a wounded serpent, and they fled 
In terrored mut'ny down Olympus flanks. 
Unmoved as is the flame-ribbed sun he stood, 



148 The Truth-God 

A curse in every angle, mockery 
In every stubborned line, and black turmoil 
Nursing upon his heart most hellish hate. 
Then came the pearl of all that household 

high— 
A prism-mantled daughter of the lyre — 
Who met the purplind bearing fierce and 

strange. 
With maiden innocence, and there poured 

forth 
A rich warm nectar of sweet minstrelsy 
Into his empty ears and fed them gall ; 
Another hiss, and that aspiring voice 
Fell wounded into discord. Then with scorn 
That laid its pestilential length adown 
His whole corroding spirit, he bent low 
His scorching eyes to earth, and folded firm 
His crampen arms as if to swathe the wound 
Sunk on his nature difficult, and walked — 
Whither, he knew not — cared not, save to mix 
Some compound drug of reason that could 

soothe 
His ravaged virgin vanity. Oh Pride ! 
Thou mother of the still-born pomps of men 
That turns state's evidence, how even gods 
In their omnific states nurse thee with pap 
Distilled of wolf's bane and the follies bred 
Of over-ease and power. O traitored Hour! — 
The season when all Nature is propelled 



The Truth-God 149 



By counter reason, and of shame cast back 
In her progressive weal, waning away. 
Alas, for him who paced his golden path 
As if 't were moulten lava ravaged down 
From the discratered cup of some dead moon. 

But soon this mighty mischief on his soul 
Was challenged by a sager argument ; 
And with his clenching lids dropt as a veil 
Betwixt him and that riven stage of woe, 
He touched the tiger wrath on the fierce mane 
As with a wand of reason politic, 
And forth there was a calm. Then from the 

deeps 
Of that stern bosom widened to the thought. 
He poured the sterling mood to heaven, and 

shook 
Those rascal follies to a sober dawn 
Of logic calmer to the mad refrain. 
And spake, of half repentance seized : — 

"Alas! 
Why am I thus benight of heathen rage 
As to out-spleen the dogs of damned desire 
Hard at the heels of Folly ? Why am I 
By this insidious lust for that which pride 
Must challenge from ill-circumstance, mf.de 

babe 
With even mortal malice ? Down, Pride ! 

down : 



150 The Truth- God 

And thou malfeasant and opprobrious dog 
That slips the noose upon me unaware — 
Doubt ! rebel to heaven, presuming now 
To conquest back the birthright of thy due, 
Why should not the all-judging elements 
Lash challenge on thy horny cheek, if now 
Thou 'rt grown unfit to lord them ? Why not 

all 
The unslaved paramount of earth and heaven 
Fling gauntlet at thy feet and cry thee coward, 
When by such scurved deed thou art proved 

kith 
With damnedest viperdom ? Alas for me ! 
That these unmuzzled means of mine do chafe 
And fester the right arm that wears their seal. 
Power ! oh, what a burden thou on any brow 
But the Almighty God's. The stygean wolf 
Would be a god ; the god, sick of his state 
And the metheglin courtesies of fools. 
Would stoop to rob a sepulcher and lick 
A pagan's leeched bones, if but to break 
This fag-born mad monotony of rule." 

Thus the preserver of the arts, sprang up 
Full in the mete conviction of his wrong. 
Bowed of o'er-apt compulsion to the truth, 
With shame anointing even these gaping 

wounds 
By the red lash of Science mothered there 



The Truth- God 151 

When she confessed her quickened wish that 

Doubt— 
Her first-born flung down to the nadir seas — 
Be here recalled to minister to heaven, 
And sway the realm of Truth far, far without 
Its proper orbit. Thus the Truth-god won 
Upon his sun-pitched pride a conquest mete — 
A double-due nobility which hence 
Could serve even this chiefmost arm of Law 
A purpose to the marrows. Then he smoothed 
Down from his shoulders those perplexed 

locks 
Which by this extreme infamy of wrath 
That might have torn another chaos down 
Upon Creation's minting palms, was rent 
Into confounded coil, and stroked his beard 
Knotty and complicate as mystery's self. 
Then spelled at heart by forced composure so, 
On straightway paced he to his capitol, 
Where, in the sordid chill of solitude. 
He could repair his mood, and to these 

wronged 
And thrice insulted subject Powers of heaven. 
Make properest recompense, and so regain 
Their elemental will. 

Thus sweet resolved, 
He mounted the huge port beyond the gates, 
But ere he entered, gazed into the noon 



152 The Truth- God 

With crimson courtesies greeting the stars 
That bore him sweet salute. Then on and on 
Through peristyle and opal-armored vault, 
Through transept pale with iridescent mist 
Of fragrant fountains, on through rapturous 

naves 
In phantasy mosaic-floored, still on 
Through crescent arcades prismed happily 
In hues swept from the arched pavilion hung 
With crystal pendants diamonding the light — 
And still on, on, till soon the busy din 
Of sky-god voices trespassed on his ears. 
He halted ; but he halted then too late : 
For forth from yon pale polygon of state 
Wherein the allies of this armed god 
Held council stern, a form approached him 

swift 
With fingers pressed all chidingly her lips. 
And step of featherest safety, bending down 
Her lithe-limbed grace all kneelingly submiss 
Before him as in adoration. Still 
A stern task jeopardized that fevering lip. 
As though she bowed o'er some precipitate 
And jutty ledge that looked down on a hell 
Of peril, quivering. He, with frown and fear, 
Bade her arise and make her mission plain ; 
But with a hiss, she beckoned him to take 
Her hand and be led off from hazard soil, 
And learn the truth in secret. But again 



The Truth- God le^ 

That arrogance rose to his furrowed front, 
And with a voice o'er-panoplied of scorn, 
Demanded : — 

"What would'st make of me, thou daughter 
Of the divorcive Destinies ? — up ! speak ! 
Truth is an open secret to the gods,^ — 
The least e'en to greatest, braving default 
E'en in their very teeth, so armored-proof 
Stands he in th' face of question. Speak to me ! 
What wonder-working mystery is this 
Which would make Truth repair unto his cell 
And play the anchor scarred in penance 

damned 
For sin unwrit of Judgment ? Ho ! ye risen 
All-wise of meting heaven : what rebel doubt 
That Truth prevails and captious hell is con- 
quered 
Maintains? speak thou! Methinks the universe 
Ungirdled hath been trapped, and anarch 

fiends 
Taken up the hilt of rule. What mischief 

yonder 
That thou would'st bribe with snaring eyes 

thy king 
From his rebellious realm ? Off ! bid me pass ! 
And durst thou? " 

Then resolved even more, 



154 T^^^ Truth' God 

The goddess, champion of that moment fierce, 
Threw her faint form full in his irate path, 
Clinging his sovereign skirts beseeching still 
With more of earnestness than dignity 
Up to his shrinking mien: — 

" Most worshipful 
Of the benignant suns in whose reflect 
And solemn light we are ! On lowliest knee 
Doth she the second trunk of Science, bend — 
And wherefore ? Oh why task me to the tale ? 
Hear'st not the fury-teeming din beyond 
And know St not yet the meaning ? They are 

there — 
The gods of Truth's great household with 

their Queen 
Science, that stubborn and unbending hilt 
Who yet despite thy curse shall part the gates 
Of heaven to him her first-born whom she 

flung 
To the swollen seas, and let the rebel Doubt 
Behold his mother to the dust repentant. 
E'en now the young god raps upon the gates, 
With murmurings and beseechings which shall 

take 
Anon a threatening measure if thou still 
Deny him. And be warned : for he hath 

trumped 
Full many of thy most trusted armories 



The Truth-God i^^ 

To battle 'gainst their god if he be loath 
To grant him audience. Venture not, I pray ; 
Oh venture not in their rebellious midst 
Lest thou, too, even o'ercome of impulse rash, 
Precipitate some heady violence ' 
That brings disaster on thy sun-propped realm. 
Oh leave them to their moils but for an hour ; 
And though tliou art the foremost in the wrong. 
Mayhap forgiveness gains ascendence, and 
By eventide may even Science greet 
Her oft'-forgetful sovereign with a kiss, 
And these impending tragedies be foiled. 
Come, come, O Peer ! and let me counsel 

thee ; 
Come : to the groves that skirt this upper 

Eden 
With fragrant 'broideries of flowers and herb; 
There seal thy soul its ease ! " 

Then the bowed frame 
Of the Olympian Pillar shook like reed 
In blind precipitation of his pride ; 
And gathering up his huge reserve, he struck 
The quaking floors with his subduing palms 
Till the seized mountain groaned. Then hurl- 
ing wide 
That bronzed panoply girding his trunk 
As to pluck out all soft resolves that bent 
His neck to sufferance, he measured forth 



156 The Truth' God 

A titan stride on toward the peopled court, 
Leaving his smoking footprints swart and 

sunk 
In the marmorial highways as he passed, 
And all the arc dammed up their million 

mouths, 
Their paeans bursting from melodious din 
To discord mutinous. The portals huge 
Of that tumultuous alabaster nave 
Stood as Colossus' limbs before him parted 
Like hell yawn to the Inferi. On, on, 
He strode, each moment fiercer guled 
Of forehead with a scarlet-frowned resolve, 
His crownless locks whipping the wildered air, 
And with heaven-lashing e3'es, that gaping port 
Into their tempest-stricken midst — entered i — 
Yea, even into their mid-most turmoils 
He plunged, as hundred-handed in his wrath 
As Typhon sprung from galled Tartarus 
Into the poltroon field, and stood defiant. 
The mountain heaved alike a panting boar 
Hounded of cruel hunter, breaching wide 
Her mammoth ribs by the audacious volt. 
Fuming with fear down to her moulten heart. 
The rebel elements and sovereign arms 
That served their Prince till on this sunken 

hour 
With cringing fawn, — all, all assumed the 

plague, 



The Truth- God 



IS7 



Swilling to mad intemperance the draught 
That seized them to the vitals and rent riot 
Through the tense fever and the broil of noon. 
That over-brooded wrath of Truth made quail 
Even his sovereign self ; and he bent down 
Like fiend, with grip upon his fretted throat, 
Lab'ring to damn back the delirium 
That ran each vein with ever-thicker rheum 
And venom to the core, lest far beyond 
Redeem the fanes of heaven precipitate 
Plunge Doubtward ; but that causeless purpose 

flagged. 
Scourge upon scourge those glances lightning- 

fanged 
Fell flaying the dumb noon, and by mischance 
Full into the pale face of Science drove. 
There was his madness met a thousand-fold 
More scourgful of reproach ; for like a nymph 
Of stiff flint hewn abandoned in some niche 
Inviolate, she tranquil stood at bay, 
With poignant venom in the avveless eyes. 
Gazing contempt full in his seething front. 
Then in one counter-volt there fell a calm 
Athwart that heaving realm, and war was 

hushed 
Dumb-mouthed of all those batteries of hate, 
And at her feet the great god sank subdued. 
The tragedy was o'er ; and yet that host 
Of awe-assembled deities aghast. 



158 The Truth-God 

Stood in dishevelled ranks, locked arm in arm 
One with another as to prop their fears. 
There lay the shield of conquest headlong 

thrown 
In the delirium, a sacrifice 
To the prevailing thirst ; and nearest this 
The Arts unmasked stood, with usual mien 
Vanquished to cowardice and paltroon faint ; 
Then Poesy, and Music, and she too 
Their homaged consort bent, — all gathering up 
The fragments of their valiance in default, 
Embalmed of sable marvelling at such 
Fell mutiny. And last of all, yet first 
In this huge cast of battle-drama weird — 
Least yielding still hard-stubborned in her 

course — 
Science, with pitched hatred pressed, low knelt 
Down by the self-outbattled son of Jove, 
And swept his martial locks from the wild 

brows, 
Staring that august wrath as she might peer 
Down the red craters of diseasing iEtna 
Blood-cankered to the midmost vitals deep. 
He parted on the air his swollen lips, 
Gazing down with a frown, half penitent 
And still-defiant shame, thus grappling eyes 
With his commandant spouse with look laid 

bare 
Like the calm edge of parched and thirsty steel 



The Truth- God 159 



Hilted imperious. For moments there 
While the o'er-swooned autocracy of day 
Snatched back its poise and rose more sol- 
dierly, 
The mutual vulture-eye as hard oppressed, 
Stung haughtily its horny adversary, 
Till each to each obedient now grew. 
Then with the vantage balanced to her will. 
Thus Science dared on the monarchial noon 
A voice of pensioned amity, and smoothed 
This dire alarm e'en with a woman's touch 
Of tranquil caution and peace-offering 
Thus rev'rently : — 

'' O Truth ! heart-rived Chief! 
Thou sky-surmounting Temple of the Law ! — 
By birth but equal, yet by prestige sumless 
My lord — my full Transcendence ! Take these 

words. 
And by thy kindmost alchemies resolve 
Each word t' its virgin pith, and of that gold 
Weld thou a girdle for thy madcap loins. 
Though king, chief, legislator, lord. 
And over all my mincing pride of place 
Thou strategist all absolute, far, far 
Beyond and over all this feudal voice. 
Thou art my husband, — aye, my sky-sworn 

mate, 
And I by virtue of the altar-stars 



i6o The Truth- God 

Which heard thy vow and mine, thy co-realmed 

spouse. 
Hear me, I charge, when lesser deities 
Out-voiced are by thy thunders ; hear my 

words 
Though all the supercilious space shrink back 
Into their infamies, dumb at thy best 
And craven to thy frown ; yea, hear my words 
When all of the ambitious stars or earth 
Turn their renowns to bubble disrepute 
At glimpse of thy displeasure, and give heed 
To link out to the holy utmost all 
That prompts my tongue this burden. ..." 

Then paused she. 
And in that limpid interval there fell 
A crucial stroke athwart the bowed god's 

pride ; 
And he arose and clenched his mitred teeth. 
Shaking his druid frame as 't were a Sphinx 
He would to put to proof by some huge task. 
Then Science, full perceiving some new siege, 
Shrank ; and up-poised her arm as to foil down 
The shameless charge, parting with passive 

speech 
Her swollen lip, when thus reprisal came 
Mettling the hilt of Truth : — 

"Ye scorn-eclipsed 



The Truth- God i6i 

And brazen satellites who steal big fire 

And gild repute^ from such a sun as I ! — 

Ye cant-swathed and presumptuous moons 

who thieve 
Your pompous glitter from this sovereign noon, 
And vaunt upon the starveling heart of man 
These baby-thunders that make boast to heaven 
Your follies rank ! be ye forewarned— fore- 
armed : 
Let Doubt war upon Truth with all your 

brimmed 
And vaunting cups to toast him into rule ; 
With all mankind pouring their red heart's life 
Into the damned libation ; yea, with all 
The sovereign planets toppling o'er its verge 
A moulten union precious to his weal ; 
But not till suns shall cease to pendulum space, 
The God that is shall be a god that was, — 
Till Past and Future like two brothers parted 
Clasp hands on th' galled apex, realmless fall'n 
In the black cerements of nadir night. 
Shall Truth be crushed, a Doubt-god conquer 

heaven, 
Science eclipse the Christ, or a lie prevail. 
Who am I, thus to take this rack of curse 
Unflinching? Am I but your vantage-fool 
To play at draughs with hell, 'stead of your 

king ? 
What ! I, the churl-born virmin at your call ? — 



i62 The Truth-God 

The asp whipped into flattery by woman ? — 
The reptile of your bhishless progeny, — 
And all, forsooth, I am at times inapt 
At bridling the rash license of my vein — 
This yoke of rule that chafes me ? Out ! ye 

blind 
Mal-mothered, pomp-o'erflattered, boneless 

breed ! 
Ye make me taste the Doubt-god's stygean 

spleen 
When I so contemplate your unlicked shapes — 
Down, down ! ye she-bears of Imaus, down ! 
And finish your crude tasks. Out ! ye rent suns 
Presuming to my brows. And thou, bowed 

heaven ! 
My own blue wine-cup of its weal capsized 
And on my head inverted ! — thou art grave. 
Pale-jaundiced and funereal in thy mien, 
As if some hell's huge scorpion had snailed 
Aslant thy azure front and in his wake 
Another Milky Way of ulcers rank 
Took root on thy virgin breast. Oh can it be 
That this Time-buoying and sun-shouldering 

state — 
This sovereign climax of the major gods — 
Now stands war with its very subject Laws 
To prove ascendency ? That Doubt so propped 
Upon Olympus flanks, may wiiip the stars 
To tribute, yoke the herding suns to toil 



The Truth-God 163 

In hireling plowshares and these horned moons 

To serve him flagon wherewith he may toast 

My weal to hell, and spring to th' riven breech 

A conqueror, — aU but to prove Truth here 

An underling of that he domineers? 

Oh shame ! Shall such ascendency be clipped 

As some Utopian fledgling over-apt 

It father to out-region ? Yet, O Day ! 

Must I lay down my arms e'en at the hiss 

Of a rebellious heaven ? Rend ! ye vaults 

That mock back my spent thunders, dungeon up 

The rebel gods conspiring ! Hence am I 

By oath upon my crown, the challenger 

Of all the mutinous principalities 

That ache for war aud spoil. Hear me. Oh 

Earth !— 
Shielding th' opprobrious dog flung from this 

seat 
Of empire as unworthy of his sire — 
Tremble, ye mid-main waters, and ye crags 
That threat the bosom of the virgin skies ! — 
And ye blue-pacing clouds ! bend to my reach ; 
For till this wrath be stayed, Science — the first 
Of the offending mutineers who would 
Grace back her banished son to greet her, now 
Grown whelp-like penitent of all her past — 
Aye, from yon cloud's swart entrails, by the 

heel 
Shall Science swing over the abyss of hell. 



164 The Truth- God 

And yon mad whirlwinds wrench her wanton 

limbs 
Till she be purged of all her inborn guilt, 
And justice stand appeased. The hour is up ! 
Down, down, ye seething clouds ! Doubt shall 

not rule. ..." 

So vowing, the mordacious god threw high 
His huge vein-bloated arms above his rocked 
And crownless brows, driving that arrowy 

shriek 
Home to the heart of heaven. Him answering 

back. 
The Whirlwinds in their brutish chariots 
Flocked vulture-like, cloaking that sacred fane 
With one encumbrous mask of poison fumes 
Sulphurous of tomb-damp and the broil of hell 
With rheum and hemlock in each mortal 

draught. 
The victim of that ravaged sovereign's wrath 
Shrank to the nave, and many a shielding god 
Threw his cerulean mantle down upon 
That sunk and crouching feature as to hide 
Their queen from the great god's advancing 

wrath. 
But judging their rash stratagem, with this 
He struggled forward to the ambushed queen, 
Rent a huge swath in those defending ranks 
Betwixt his wrath malignant and its slave, 



The Truth- God 



165 



Snatched forth that goddess in his giant grip, 
And 'mid the hiss and gnashing, threw her high 
Above his bolting head and strided forth— 
Forth to the abrupt ledge of that vast hall 
Where look the portals o'er the yawn of hell- 
There hesitating but one dread-bound trice 
Ere hurling her in all her sovereign robes 
Out on the itching and wide-armed cloud 
That fevered to his will That sweet delay 
Stood fatal to his cause ; for lo! there met 
The Truth-god at that rim where heaven looks 

down 
Upon the tempest-battling Earth, a giant form, 
A stranger in their midst, with tenting eyes 
Defiant, and with stubborned arm uppoised 
Wielding some mammoth weapon of the sea. 
Truth faltered, but relinquished not his task. 
Meanwhile the fragile gods skirting his state, 
Dammed up the open port, and shrieked for 

joy 

At the new-dawned chief, and he the king 
O'ercome by such a tide of counter-plot, 
Let fall his precious spoil, clenching amain 
His spirit combatant into the breach, 
Demanding : — 

"Who art thou, O Son of Space ! 
And how durst so to trespass on this seat 
Of calm divinity with arms profane ? 



1 66 The Truth- God 

Out, out ! thou snake of Erebus. ..." 

And yet, 
The young-browed sponsor from that under- 
world 
Moved not ; but cradling his calm-eyed resolve 
Backboned of the dishonor heapen thus 
Upon his mother's cheek, dared forth and 

spake 
While all the elements made greedy stir 
To toast his gallantry : — 

" Thou know'st me not ? — 
And yet upon the throne of Truth who bears 
A worthier title to the name of ' Son ' ? 
That daughter of the Light whom thou pre- 

sum'st 
With anarch arms to cast opprobrious 
Into the teeth of fiends to bruit to hell 
The volley of thy rascal spleen, in truth, 
Thy wife, thy sister ; yet to me she bears 
A nearer, dearer-churched affinity 
True through the tide of this eternal noom 
I am the Doubt-god who by treason foul 
And these wry wherefores by which God enacts 
The reasonless law of sufferance and pain 
Which deities nor yet the underbred 
Of earth may solve to adequate design, 
Was headlong cast down from my templed pitch 



The Truth-God 167 



In dudgeon fell deep to the rankling seas, — 
And all, forsooth, that Science bore a Doubt 
To honor thee, rather than puny Faith, 
To bear thy realm a seal. And I am come 
To gain back this ascendence from me torn, 
By dint of arms and by siege combating 
If thus denied my pleading turned to scorn ; 
And first of all demand of captious Truth, 
How durst this black indignity upon 
My mother's brow ? Speak-- speak ! " 

With this bare speech 
Sunk on his cankering heart with vital sting. 
The awful god upheaved his speechless bulk 
Till like a meteor his feature blazed ; 
Then summing up his ire and leaning back 
As to bombard a citadel of fiends. 
He plunged at the young warrior at the gates. 
And with his brawn-taut clench upon the 

throat 
Of that hard-struggling interloper, up, 
High up into dumb and wildered air, 
Mid groans and shrieks that pried the port of 

heaven 
And made this solid seat of empire quail. 
With headlong pitch he cast him into space 
With curses, saw him reel on the dim void 
Till to a mote that giant import shrank — 
Down, down, soon lost upon the strained eye — 
Earthward descending through the vast inane ! 



Untitled Lyrics and Sonnets 



Untitled Lyrics and Sonnets 171 



%(ntitU^ ShHit* axib Sonnet* 



I. 



This world 's but Truth-god's tear-drop, love, 

A Truth-god's crystallized tear ; 
Some say 't was a tear of sorrow, love, 

Some say 't was of gladness, dear. 
To me ' t is a tear of sadness, love, 

When thou no more art here ; 
In truth ' t is a tear of gladness, love, 

When thou, my life, art near. 

And Life is a peal of laughter, love. 

Aye, Life is a laugh, and well : 
Some say 't is a laugh from heaven, love. 

Some say 't is a scoff from hell ; 



t72 Untitled Lyics 

But whether 't is laughter of ecstacy, love, 
Or a fiend's once a mortal that fell, 

Nor saints, nor sages, nor prophets, love, 
Can stand before heaven and tell. 

These days are mysterious dream-seasons, lov.e. 

Yea, mystery a mystery within ; 
Some say they 're an opiate rapture, love. 

Some say they 're a penance for sin. 
Yet, whose sin, yet what sin, and why, love. 

We die ere to know we begin ; 
Yet, whence, and yet whither, these mysteries, 
love, — 

All 's answered in what might have been. 

And Death is the handmaid of Life, love, 

Aye, Death is the maid at her right ; 
Some say 't is an angel of Eden, love, 

Some say 't is a demon of Night. 
'T is a god to the Faith that beckons it, love, 

'T is a fiend to the coward in flight ; 
But whether thing holy or damned, love, 

Still cries saint and sage for ' More Light ! ' 

And Charity — God-spoused Charity, love. 
That fount whence all heart's-ease may flow. 

Some say she is dead, — aye, long dead, love. 
Yet, some say she still lives below. 



and Sonnets 



173 



She *s a living, on- waging triumph, love, 
In one deed of uplifting from woe ; 

She 's a dead-hearted, cariion mask, love, 
To the faith that hath died long ago. 

But Love ! thou art constancy multiplied still 

This world to thy world— oh, how small ! 
Some say thou art born every hour, and yet. 

Some say thou wert ne'er born at all. 
But whether eternity lies in thy look, 

Or serv'st but these blind hours to call, 
Thy sun warm the noon of our peace, Love ! 

Till heavens on heaven shall fall. 



174 Untitled Lyrics 



II. 



How rose a promise with that sun 
That breathed like incense from the sea, 

To teach my youth each day begun 
A new life-dawn of liberty ! 

Ah, life was non-oblivion 

In all I thought young Love to be. 

The wreathing stars embowered my dreams 
Like Saturn with a thousand girds ; 

And Nature in those rich extremes, 
Gave me a conquest over words. 

Ah, what a solemn rite to me, — 

This, this I dreamt young Love to be ! 

And Night wrapt Solitude in thought, 
Whisp'ring sweet speech of paradise ; 

And when my solemn spirit caught 
The deep reflection, ah, 't was thrice 

Proved sire of that divine To be 
In all that love should seek in me. 

And forests, stars, and flowers, and caves. 
Were virgins trothed my warrior Thought ; 

While I like some pleased sire who raves 
So like a lover over-wrought, 

Joined in their nuptial jubilee — 

' Twas all I thought young Love to be. 



and Sonnets 



175 



And I made mirth for Sorrow's dearth, 
Drank sadness to the dying year ; 

Joyed with each advent cycle's birth, 
Kissing the flagon to its cheer ; 

And Faith's sweet answers were to me 

All, all I thought young Love to be. 

My soul ! hath time taught thee the less 
That life God-arrowed from the grave, 

And Truth and Faith and Power caress 
Only God's children over-brave ? 

Ah, may these never cease in thee 

To prove all thou deem'st Love to be. 



176 Untitled Lyrics 



III. 

Sweet Woman ! — rival of all else 
Of earth unto my willing soul, — 
How at thy touch of love, my whole 

Proud being kneels and its profane thought 
melts. 

I love thee ; for thou art alone 
The first and best interpreter 
Of all the scripture truths that were, 

And are, and yet shall kiss the cloistered stone. 

Wherein is goodness save in thee ? — 

Meek miracle of larger Will ; 

Wherein is faith save in thee still ? — 
My heaven elect that is, and is to be. 

I love thee ; yet 'twould be a crime 
In aught that knew to love thee not ; 
So love's my simple, childish lot> 

And not a virtue proven so sublime. 

God gave me but a rugged heart 
To serve thine own, turning its tide 
To love for thy sweet sake, and wide 

The gates of peace and plenty bear apart. 



and Sonnets 177 



Thou, o'er my spirit's church and state 
First prophet sovereign at that shrine ; 
All that is mine thus truly, doubly thine, 

Reproving wrong and kneeling kindly Fate. 

Love, every hour outspeeds a year 

In thy fond presence, and to me 

Life hath the ring of victory 
When eve is come and thou, my life, art near. 

What tribute can Affection pay 

In fealty to so prime a grace ? — 

Only the light of thy dear face 
Can wave these all-offending glooms away. 

Only such recompense as this 
Requites to heaven a fallen hope ; 
Only such constancy may ope' 

The temple gates into God-chosen bliss. 

Thus love I thee : thou art alone 
The first and best interpreter 
Of all the scriptural laws that were 

And are, and yet shall kiss the cloistered 
stone. 



17^ Untitled Lyrics 



IV. 



There was once a trance-like being 
Who arose ethereal-soulcd, 

From that Calm beyond our seeing — 
From Truth's urn of moulten gold — 
Rose like a god of Triumph bold. 

Prophecy sat on his forehead, 

Power throned on his look and tongue ; 
Truth and Beauty there recorded 

Bonds with Nature's heart unsung, 

And the gods his lyre strung. 

Long, long heard the world his crying 
Through the darkness to the stars ; 

Long, long watched this master prying 
Through yon armories of Mars — 
Phoebus' bolts and Saturn's bars. 

His was touch of transformation — 
Love's young oracle of light ; 

God in dreams and meditation, 
God in effort, God in right — 
God in all that conquers Night. 

Then came there a day of trial, — 
Lo ! his conquest was no more ; 



and Sonnets 



179 



And the gods with shattered dial 
Their rich promises forswore — 
Curst whom they had kissed before. 

Then the world knelt by his pillow 
Where Italian twilights knelt, 

And they marvelled that the willow 
Bent so close the tomb where dwelt 
He whom Nature knew and felt. 

Aye, they marvelled ; yet they knew not 
Why Earth bowed in widowhood, 

Silent wept where wormwood grew not ; 
But that one whom Beauty wooed, 
Nature loved and understood. 

Ah, how many a starry-hearted 
Looks with love his brothers* eyes ; 

Yet receives for love imparted 
Only hate in hooded guise — 
Hate that speaks through kissing eyes. 

But the valiant in their daring 
For their fellow-frail below, 

Though mistaken looks are wearing. 
Nature loves and honors so : 
None but God the heart can know. 



i8o Untitled Lyrics 



V. 



Come with me, my angel-bride, 
Let us wander side by side ; 
Where bowed Winter's cradle lies 
'Tween the peaks that fret the skies, — 
In the eaves of glacial mountains, 
By their star-eclipsing fountains. 
Where the mother Whirlwind rocks 
Her babes upon the equinox; 
And the pale clouds kiss her bed 
Like the shrouds that woo the dead. 

Come with nle, my angel-bride. 
Where the summer Psyche died : 
Where the snows that mound her cave 
Guard it as a hero's grave. 
Where the vales of suns unblest. 
Find young Noon by Night caressed ; 
And mad avalanches throw 
Storm-leviathans below. 
And those torrent waters twine 
Mountain music all-divine. 

Come with me, my angel-bride, 
Where yon Years by Lethe hide ; 
Where dead Ages found their prime — 



and Sonnets i8i 



Deathless anchorage of Time. 

Where these Hours, like Truth-god's tears, 

Swift distil to torrent years ; 

Still o'er-flowing high their lake, 

Valley pilgrimages make ; 

Sweeping crystal fingers o'er 

The lyres of the mountain roar. 

Come with me, my angel-bride. 
Where the drowsing billows ride ; 
Where the poppied isles of ease 
Sleep in paradisial seas. 
Where the spirit kissed of Ages, 
Walks with patriarchs and sages ; 
And the love of love's content 
Thus with Nature's nature blent ; 
God and his Earth-image one — 
One sweet labor never done. 

Come with me, my angel-bride, 
Where those Springtide-nymphs abide ; 
111 Elysiums of light. 
Forging armors 'gainst the night. 
Liftmg Progress from dead fact, — 
Man to think and man to act. 
Where they press at morn of years — 
Truth's west-waging pioneers — 
And with wands imperial, free, 
Bid all beauty rise and be. 



1 82 Untitled Lyrics 



Come with me, my angel-bride ; 
Widowed Autumn, golden-dyed, 
Rides her chariot of sighs : 
Let us follow till she dies. 
See ! the May-child lays her head 
On November's bosom-bed ; 
While her anadem of dew 
Pales a frosten, anguished hue ; 
And her smile of earnest light 
Chills e'en at the kiss of Night. 

Come with me, my angel-bride, 
Come and wander by my side ; 
Where all realms of earth or air 
Teach us truths divinely fair. 
Where the God in man is blest 
A heaven in his own passion-breast. 
Come where Nature's bosom bare 
Bids you pillow Life's dispair; 
Proving by her blessings rife : 
God is love, and love is life. 



and Sonnets 183 



VI. 

The simple heart the truest beats, 
The simplest joys are purest ; 

The simple life the truest life, 
The simplest faith the surest. 

The simplest truths the God's truths are, 
The simple deeds, the dearer ; 

Love, simply love makes life worth life, 
And heaven through these the nearer. 

Then let the simple mind bow down. 
Taking the penance of our days 

With big, big thanks ; leaving to him 
Who boasts, the curse of praise. 

Then let the simple hope be glad. 
And in a childlike trust most wise; 

And let the duty done see heaven 
Deep in some thankful eyes. 

Only the godless hope dethroned 
Finds the red heart turned infidel ; 

Only flesh-ambitions fallen 
Taste the deeps of hell. 



184 Untitled Lyrics 



The glittering art that prays sweet prayers 

At heaven, but unto men, 
Finds in success the devil's curse 

That shall return again. 

The simplfe deed, the simple strain, 
The simple word God-given — 

These start great worlds on orbits high, 
And prop the eaves of heaven. 

Peace, peace ! young Heart ; close thy 
wide eyes — 

Shut out the castle of thy dream ; 
Thy worship find a simpler creed. 

Thy art, a simpler theme. 



and Sonnets 



185 



VII. 

A sun rose, and a sun died, 

And on darkness swooned the day ; 

A love rose, and a love died — 
In its passion wept away. 

Had the dead sun been the God's sun, 
'T would have dawned eternal day ; 

Had the dead love been the God's love, 
'T would have lived and loved for aye. 



1 86 Untitled Lyrics 



VIII. 

There 's in grief a solace — lo ! 
Even if the cup o'erflow, 
When we reason down the sorrow 
With a faith, and by our woe 
The godlier grow. 

A like nobleness God gave 
To the work of king and slave, 
If with valient arm and conscience 
Man be there to dare be brave 
To do or save. 

Even in a failure lies 
Something still that dignifies 
If the heart be in the purpose 
That men from their dead selves rise, 
And grow Truth-wise. 

There are virtues in the deed 
Of the meanest child of need. 
If that art proves a religion, 
And not merely to succeed 
Be our creed. 



and Sonnets 187 



Even in the deed long dead 
There's a living god, 'tis said, 
Who shall rise and prove that manhood 
Doth transcend the heart that bled 
And art that fled. 

There 's a heart's-ease in our care — 
A redemption in despair, 
If we prove by purpose mighty 
And by thoughts all pure and fair, 
That Truth lives there. 

Not one tender tear-drop lies 
On the eyelids of the skies 
But is Nature's humbled heart 
In some crystalline disguise 
Great and wise. 



1 88 Untitled Lyrics 



IX. 



The God in lovliness ascends again, 
And lo ! Creation as on that first day 
When Light out-conquered Chaos, doth 
array 
The young-eyed Morn and all her vestal- 
train 
In bridal liveries, and hangs a chain 
Of crescent sunlight on her trothed breast. 

All things of beauty as from night-long rest 
And silver solitude rise forth and rain 
The dews in oracles upon my heart ; 
And there they crystallize to diamond 
dreams, — 
Thoughts that do find in words but a child's 
art, 
And so unvoiced — die. Ah, all that seems 
To hurl a passion o'er me, seems to steal 
Its language from my lips ; for words — words 
cannot feel. 



and Sonnets igg 



X. 

O Solitude! if in thy druid court 
These years shall lift their incense to their 
God, 
Prying to heaven through yonder fiery port — 
The sun of Truth — and from the drowsy sod 
Lift temples to the Virtues, let me trod 
The dusts with men, and all of chaste report, 

Honor. And let the beautiful and true 
Bend to my couch as waking to the sleeper, 
And let rne by thy steadfast star pursue 
The Unseen through the seen ; search out 
the keeper 
Of every castled Charity, and do 
For the sweet doing's sake,— be true for 
Truth, 
Love for Love's sake, and find in faith eter- 
nal youth. 



190 Untitled Lyrics 



XI. 



Through all the changes that the morntide 

brings, 
Through all the reverent cycles of the year, 
Through all the deeps where panting stars 

career. 
Consuming darkness on their pyre-like wings 
The poet chariots ; and o'er all he flings 
A dream-transparency all strange and clear. 

New arts and age their church of state 
uprear, 
'Nointing the poet priest o'er rarest things 
Too beautiful to breathe this leaden seal 
Of mortal sufferance. But from these deep 
And seer-like visitations doth he steal 
Immortal moments — moments like to sleep 
Giv'n o'er to sudden waking — thoughts 
that heal 
The wound on th' heart of man, teaching 
the soul to feel. 



and Sonnets 191 



XII. 

If I like babe had sweet Cassandra's ears 
To list' the touchstone voice of Nature true, 
To upspeed Thoughts like cloudward pio- 
neers 
That pierce the secrets of our being through, 
Solving this unknown Why, and of each hue, 
Or sound, or excellence of living thing, 
Interpret with a fire and passion new. 
And on bowed Error God's compassion fling. 
Then would I be a prophet, and for you : 
To crystallize your life into a gem, 
And lay it where the first of heaven might 
woo 
To bead with love their azure anadem, 
And live new life in the reflected hue — 
The hue that wreathes this heart with ama- 
ranth — not rue. 



19^ t/fititled Lyrics 



■km«pM«* ■■*«*•' 



XIII. 

Sweet friend ! — the prop of all the manhood 
mine — 
Sire of my heart so bountifully free : 
First father, since my truest birth in thee 

I bow and honor as a charge divine ! 

Why should I cloister virgin Love to pine 
In night untokened, and this gratitude 
I would she bear from my soul's solitude 

To thy warm hours, drip wormwood in the 
wine — 
My love's libation to thy weal e'en now ? 

Forbid! sweet synod of thanks-taking gods. 
Teach me apt medium for my praise ! and 

thou 
My friend, my condisciple : he who trods 
The scorn-malignant earth his thanks may 
glove 
In words ; but silence aye bespeaks the richer 
love. 



and Sonnets 



193 



XIV. 

Men's souls are channels for the Faith-god's 

wine — 
That nectar which Creation brews from 
heaven 
To rouse some Doubt-child of the heart's 

divine 
And daring One Idea. The world would 
leaven 
These attributes of genesis and growth, 

And change and aspiration, that would stir 
A spirit to high state ; there lies an oath 

Embosomed of this young astrologer 
Who would to read the stars with magian 
eyes 
And power spontaneous, and on the lip 
Of Truth's young soldier in some new em- 
prise 
Of beauty or of song, who dares to dip 
His pen into the rainbow ; aye, a vow 
That writes heavens history upon a infant's 
brow. 



194 Untitled Lyrics 



XV. 

I dreamt I found a holy hydromel 
Leaping from cragged Wisdom answering 

back 
A poet-prophet's rod. 'Twas mine to dwell 
Beside this gush of heaven, and noonly 
slake 
My fever-thirst till every vital swell 
With purposes most reverent and deep. 
And now, oh, let me prove thee, Sire of 

Light !— 
Thy bounty in this tribute, while I weep 
That 't is unworthy so ; but ever bright 
Thy person lives beneath thy deed, — 't will 
keep 
Thy vigils all a-flame blessing me thrice. 

And now for a swift season. Sire ! farewell ; 
Thou in thy God, and I as sentinel 
At thy great Labors' gate, shall find true 
paradise. 



and Sonnets 195 



XVL 

My heart is lifted, and a god appears ! 

Not in the summer semblance of a dream 

Which from this brackish gulf of human tears 

Rises to prove men other than they seem ; 

But now beside the mountain's headlong 

stream, 

Beside the sister snow-crags peak on peak, 

Beside the Titan glacier's crystal gleam. 
My spirit revels till my pulse grows weak 
With this spontaneous luxury of awe. 
And lo ! I gaze, but cannot, would not, 
speak ; 
Thus yielding the unbodied soul, I draw 
The prophet's veil on my new-realmed heart. 
Crushing all speech to silence bowed and 
meek — 
Meek as some child of Nature's counterpart 
Who, to make passion wise, finds but in deeds 
true art. 



196 Untitled Lyrics 



XVII. 

Arise, young Sun ! and beard the armed sky— 
Thou Faith-led phantasy of rugged song ! 
The gods their symbol of the wise and 

strong 
Have found in thee. Tell me ; does Duty try 
Or do? Truth's secret flames in thy fierce eye 
And open heart-throb ; do thy Art no 

wrong 
In calling upon heaven to prolong 
The measure of thy labor-season. Die 
A thousand times for Truth and learn to 

live : 
This is thy privilege, not scourge. Arise ! 
And let the opiate of ease that pries 

Deep to flattered socket, spill ; then give 
One patient, listening moment to thy heart ; 
And having learned it well, dwell with thy 
soul apart. 



and Sonnets 197 



XVIII. 

The gods watch o'er the hero as he lies 
On this hard couch of labor and resolve ; 
And round and round his contrite days 
revolve 
The suns that give him arms and light. 

His eyes 
Now Godward turn, and like a seer he pries 
Deep to the primal arcs of Time, and lo ! 
His spirit so ascendant, there is met 

And blest his seeking, and he bears below 
The law that serves the gods an amulet — 
The law of labor by which Power did sweat 
Creation forth from Chaos, long ere Woe 
And Indolence, that mother of young Crime, 
Made such a beasts' arena of old Time, 
Where men for three score years must suffer, 
bleed and go. 



198 Untitled Lyrics 



XIX. 

Thou cloudward Spirit! like a comet swift, 
Self-ravishing through all observant space: 
Thou Power in weakness that doth nightly 

trace 
God on the all Mysterious, and lift 
Mankind from this trite circle through the 
rift 
Between the parted stars — Art ! thy embrace 
Rocks all these babes of promise, born of 
grace 
And supreme unction, and thy bridal gift 
Is the young Nature's heirloom of the 
Light- 
Empyrean goodness open on the face 
Of things most commonplace, breathing 

bright 
A fire into themselves and all mankind; 
Despising power, or purse, or time, or race, 
So long as Art is proved th' redeemer of 
mind. 



■ ■■■■■kHMnmnniHiiiiHviniHiniMiiB 



and Sonnets 199 



XX. 

Pale star! still steadfast orbited of Trust 
As when my childhood innocence was taught 
How much of a heart's faith is anguish- 
bought — 
How much of love embraced but planet-dust; 
How much of life's chilled discipline is 

* must,' 
And pleasure oft' of th' forging curse is 

wrought ; 
How men turn cowards hounded by their 
thought, 
And unchurched morals rank to wanton rust. 
With thee oh, let me still abide, and pay 
This debt of youth's almighty pledge of 
deeds 
With manhood's labors, and my brave To-day 
Transcend the dead ten thousand days that 
sway 
From history and scripture. Now, oh. Now 
My solemn watchword be, — my creed, my art, 
my vow! 



20d Ufttitkd Lyrics 



XXI. 

Sweet Mother of the Beautiful and True ! — 
Thou yet unravished of polluting eyes — 
Why may I not throw down this purple 
guise 
Called 'Custom,' cast this crown of thorns 

and rue 
From my faint brow, and but for you, for 
you — 
O perfect spirit ! grow austere and wise 
In resignation — ah, that law which pries 
A godship from the heart of man, — and do 
Where now I dream of doing? Why, still why 
Must man wage on 'gainst hell with but a 

truce 
For right-armed weapon and a coward's mail 
To prove his worth to heaven ? Why must 
snail 
This unclean creed of Use that is Abuse 
Grown cunning? Up, dead soul! let Cour- 
age still prevail. 



and Sonnets 201 



XXII. 

There bends a solemn season on my heart : 
An Autumn season mellow, deep, and 
strange ; 
For Memory with that calm-voiced master- 
art, 
Forgetting this mad repetend of change. 
Pours these pale images of death and rest 
Upon this palsied, spectre-ridden breast. 
My spirit flags ; and the quick sense grown 
dumb, 
I cannot wake to words this prisoned thought. 
The chariot in which I have been caught 

Up, up into my Love's Elyseum, 
Is halt, and lo ! now tombward turned apace. 
Ah Memory ! — thou dead child in my em- 
brace — 
Thou chill'st me ; and the glory of the morn 
Breathes poison on my soul grief-riven, bleed- 
ing, torn. 



202 Untitled Lyrics 



XXIII. 

The God in man can never pass away ; 
For it returneth to that parent arc, 
Whence it is proved transcendent. This sure 
spark 

Of Truth within us— this inspired clay 

All fire, all feeling : 'twas not for a day 
Snatched into being from uncertain dark 
To kiss dumb Circumstance, or make its 
mark 

With blood and tear-drops, and thus to decay 

Sink nightward evermore ; but at the tomb 
Doth man receive true birth, and unto God 

Henceforth ascendant, doth himself resume — 
The self of that prenatal day before 

Thus born to being on this alien sod. 
And there lives he the life of Life forevermore. 



and Sonnets ^6^ 



XXIV. 

'T is midnight, O my soul ! and thou awake, 
Counting the dead day's hours long loved 

and lost, 
As if a rosary with some beads tossed 
Into oblivion for thy folly's sake. 
Take up thy staff, arise ! young Heart, and 
make 
Repair for every idle thought that crossed 
Thy sacred threshold at such fatal cost. 
Let Faith regale thee fondly. Rise ! and take 
King Sloth thus by the vulnerable heel 
And hurl him hellward ; then still closer 
steal 
Upon the footsteps of thy Nature's God, 

Learning the proper prelude to thy heaven : 
Thy place in this wide drama, and so plod 
Onward, till be fulfilled one talent thou wert 
given. 



^o4 Untitled Lyrics 



XXV. 

Her lips were parted to the prayer 

That rose as if each word 
Galled down a star from heaven there, 

To prove the good God heard. 

My soul was void and darkness ; but 
Truth cried, *Let there be light!—' 

And lo ! my loved one's look uprose, 
And Day had conquered Night. 

How wound that spotless spirit round 

About my selfish soul ! — 
Without her but a fragment, I; 

But she has made me whole. 

Peace, peace ! my heart ; seal close thy lips. 

Thy secret is too dear ; 
Peace, peace ! lest Fate, or the cold world. 

Or even heaven hear. 



and Sonnets 205 



XXVI. 

Sweet-sceptred Morrow! 
With thy golden eaves 
Shelt'ring the present from the dews of death : 
Youth, sans a tear, a sorrow — 
Woos thee ; and leaves 
The past to be embalmed in its tomb-breath, 
Sifting the gold till love extinguisheth. 

How doth the young Faith-child 
With visions weird and wild, 
Flatter the sanguine hope to undefiled 
And heaven-folding fact 
Wherein a child may act 
The role of a sovereign god, and so maintain ! 
Ah, for these realmed flights — 
Grave, talismanic rites 
Of infant prayers that wreathe the infant Day 
With somewhat of a hero's immortality — 
God ! let them not forever pass away. 

To him who wraps his days 
In this consuming hymn of praise 
Not one of Time's pale, sceptic parasites 
That feeds on such Utopian delights, 
Can steal into the night alone 



2o6 Untitled Lyrics 



One petal of its flower ; 
Nor kiss the silver zone 
Of one refined and vestal-bosomed hour 
With a pollution. Nay, 
So much for God-armed Emulation's oath, — 

Feeding this blind nativity 
With power and purpose. Wisdom is a growth, 

Not impulse. Only deeds maintain 
In th' face of triflers. Culture alone is gain ; 
All else are merely riches — bubbled, vain. 
So spake the hero-prophet — he 
Browed of an elder-born philosophy : — 

* Sleep on, dead World ! I would not know 
thee less ; 

But I in Truth stand free — 
And as a freedman, scorn thy damned caress.' 



and Sonnets 207 



XXVII. 

Doth Nature dare profane the creed she swears 
In travail with the bulk of humankind — 
Calling them men ? 
There is a general mind 
With triflers and sly trafhcers of wares 
Pollution-kissed of hell, 
Eager by devil's counsel o'er-refined 
In pity for the saint that fell 
Discoursing tribute to the sword and pen. 

But he who singly dares 
To some high purpose, — he is deaf and blind 
To all save God and duty. 
Only in him lives Beauty, 
And these beatitudes of faith and fact; 
In him alone the conscious power to act 
When all the coward World despairs. 

Lo! he must grind 
Like Agonistes till his potent hairs 
Whiten ; and the sweet milks of Christ-like 
grace — 
Love tokened for this freedman race — 
Curdle with man's lack-charity and spleen. 
Alas ! to him — 



2o8 Untitled Lyrics 



This brave pearl-fisher of the mind — 
This wonder-seeker through the dark Unseen : 
This world is all a lie till Truth embrace 
The purpose of his days ; 
Till with a soldier's logic he may brim 
This cup of aching hemlock, and grown face 
to face 
With heaven, lo, all his iron ways 
Are praise-wise changed into a hero's hymn 
Lifting from the Unseen whence shall arise 
The prophets of the future. Love, 
Whate'er it touches, purifies. 
The thinker in his sovereign office stands 
One and alone. Victory ! wear thou the iron 
glove 
Of Labor. Let the solemn sands 
In thy hour-glass be drops of hero's blood : 

Turn them to gold anon, 
Counted all-priceless current coin of heaven, 

Thrice-reverenced upon 
The hearth-stone of a nation ; and let flood 

The 'plauding rain upon that lifted brow ; 
So let the proud world kneel — even as I do now. 



Zor oaster 



f^enicg.—iSSs, 



A Monologue 211 



^jcrtrxyafttetr : 



A MONOLOGUE. 



BOOK FIRST. 



An honest will bra, e-sired of Solitude, 
And by huge purpose mothered till it pries 
Forth from the skull of sable-armed Jove, 
Even as Pallas to the rugged noon — 
Lo, this the God-refined and holy milk 
The Titans of the truth of upper arcs 
Teem their young gods upon : their virtues 

shape 
Apt to the conquest on the void Eterne. 

And hath not man this synod of the Law 
Been honored ear and voice ? Deny him not, 
Sweet heaven ! while yet a prayer prevails 

from earth ; 
For man may pluck the wormwood of his state 
And cast it fiendward ; thus the general hue 



212 Zoroaster 

And trump of criminal gain forswear, 

And be a man, god-fellow and a king — 

Aye, e'en in this meek frailty — a god ; 

And when great manhood speaks, let angels 

halt 
E'en in the mid-pitch of their supple boast, 
And harken. 

The kind Earth that nurtured me 
To this high state, forsakes me at the breach ; 
The dead world wrings rebellion on my soul- 
Strange mutinies of complex hate, with scorn 
Full-teemed of hell's contagion in mens* eyes. 
With Effort templed on her offspring dead — 
These, by man's crimson rigors of reproach, 
Have made a god of me in hard resolve, 
Till my last wisdom is my first ; and all 
Is summed on solitude. 

I was a child 
Most supple and eager to the natural Light ; 
By unreproached nature a soft heart 
Repentant and to better oath most staid. 
Wisdom took ancient virtue, as a seer's 
Bowed venerable in the apparelled age. 
Breathing forth light in golden homily. 
Till Truth, ail touchstone Beauty at its core. 
Rose and proved blessed to my kneeling faith. 
I loved the world, and bore in sacrifice 



A Monologue 213 

My whole heart's duty to endue mankind 
Most graciously. I took my people's stone 
And bane-drunk idols, — these phantasmal lies 
That men mart heaven to over-reach and lawn 
With flatteries like lapping toads, — the while 
Cursers of circumstance themselves have bred, 
Kissing the heels of carrion Ignominy, 
To pluck a sleeper of her qualities ; 
And even on my iron palms, these gods 
Full-orbed in minion eyes, witiiered to dust, 
Even as Sodom apples into ash : 
Their deities of bubble days, and lo ! 
My lieart so schooled saw Pity yield the more, 
In an absolving charity, till now 
With these sweet tokens of our frail disguise — 
These weeds commiserate of stoic pomps 
Bent to the rigorous reach of certain fate, 
I lived and learned, and as a prophet stood. 
Whate'er their faults, men were my compeers 

still. 
These were my brothers — these pale churchyard 

game 
Stillborn ai birth — meek carrion with tongues. 
Companions still of every lifting thought, 
And every daring to the perfect true. 
I loved them thrice in our commutual task — 
This task half true, half false — easing tlie 

wound 



214 Zoroaster 

Of heaven called * life ' healed but of death and 

worms. 
But I have grown greater than creeds of hated ; 
My sun hath pinned the noon, and I revolt 
Against the pricks of the conforming bribe — 
Against that gilded pawn which dares unprop 
The sweetest arts of men to baser use, 
And e're my panting season shall be set, 
Swear forth my solitude and there be free. 
Men have esteemed my place in formal marts : 
But what avails ? I was not born to buy 
And sell the God's sweet alchemy ; and so 
Knowing no other creed than labor, still 
Have bent my full-teemed argument at large 
Against all surface logic, schooling well 
My purpose to the art, my conscious soul 
Superior to this scoffer's impious proof 
To things approved divine. Let the cant-dogs 
Of these fiend perturbations bay and howl 
Beside the midnight altars of my creed. 
Making a hybrid scourge of all that feels 
And so hath kin with me. I stand with heaven 
Commutual and true. I 've looked mens' eyes 
And through those lidded windows forced 

amain 
This analyzing solvent of my sires, 
Parting the man-god from the mutinous dusts: 
The gold from proud hearts' criminal alloys. 
Loved them and honored most approvingly, 



A Monologue 215 



Yet voicing on the midnight of my faith 
A language understood of gods, not tliese. 
1 made my habitation fast amid 
These younglings of the jugglers' stratagem, 
With heart a general hypocrite, in voice 
Cowed of opinion to the bane-dogs' bark ; 
And yet within me, signaled Godward still. 
By right armed daring and anointed eyes 
I stood, a priest of temples unprofaned. 
Alms-asking nothing of the bowed world's weal, 
Propped on my heart by rugged faith and fire, 
Unknelt of milken knaves, and ne'er oppressed 
Of fools that damn but do not understand. 

Men sought me out and braved me even here, 
Regioned of thoughts untreasoned of the lie 
Of common pomp with smiles concealing hell: 
Here, in the bowels of the jungle sw^art, 
Content to drink the air tlie beast exhales. 
I tracked God's footstep through the midnight 

maze 
Of cold philosophies, — on, on, o'er bogged 
And weedy knaveries of random creeds 
Kissed black with Custom's curse. Men sought 

me out 
And found me full of thoughts. From that 

large hour 
Of youth and valiance, when first solitude 
Made giant of me, and an infant sun 



2i6 Zoroaster 

In the god-regioned capitols of Truth 

Where manhood stands translated, — from that 

dream 
Whence I arose in my youth's over-zeal 
To do and be what lesser deities 
Match as with wooing friends, my constant arm 
Hath been unfaltering poised with every oath 
The First and Last gives honor. Men were 

mine 
To search, and thrice abidingly befriend. 
Herein was I new-armored, and was thence 
No longer he my mother would have sworn 
Her son in pregnant feature, and my sire 
Saw his sweet look reflected in ; for there 
Upon the midmost borders of the gods 
I lost my kin identity : became 
E'en as a humble villager of heaven. My life 
A dual life at heart : incarnate yet 
By import spiritual pride-proof and free — 
Dead, yet alive ; asleep yet ever- waking. 
I took my brothers' hands and read their griefs 
As reverend music, and so bowed their ways ; 
But in the midmost effort of my zeal, 
I knew no kin at heart. And even so 
My life upon men's palms was still unread ; 
And they forswore the bowl that smelt of bane 
To their unschooled wits, though 't was, in 

truth. 
The nectar of the gods. From that large hour 



A Monologue 217 

How was I levered of new-solving law — 
That law by which o'er wormwood Chaos fell 
Light and sweet Triumph! Thus walked I the 

earth, 
Imaging Night of neutral blasphemy 
Ton which the arrowy Morn from unseen bow 
Pried to the socket and the God revealed. 

I grew to manhood mettlesome and grave, 
With heart o'er-brewed of love — that vital milk 
Repeopling skulls with wisdom, and the tomb 
Wherein sit all the dreads of saint or seer, 
With somewhat of true majesty. And she— 
Ah, she my best beloved— alas ! how strange. 
Kissed soft my task with recognizing glance, 
Pressing my bosom as if even there 
That throbbing was my heart, that breast my 

breast, 
And my sad soul star-harvesting beyond 
E'en those love-breathing eyes, were really 

there. 
And then I turned and wept, clenching my 

hand 
Upon that mad unrest where panting throbs 
Forced the swift gall through every sickened 

vein, 
And cried into the gaping ears of heaven : 
* Alas, what madman's puppetry is this 
Wherein I play the prophet and the fool — 



2 1 8 Zoroaster 

The one to heaven, the other unto men ! ' 
But this dead prayer fell false, and on my heart 
Was answered of the silence that speaks shame 
Upon all prayer conjured of selfish weal. 

I wandered many lands and tempted seas 
That swept strange tongues upon their emer- 
ald lips; 
And yet I felt them kindred, for they knew — 
At least so fond I flattered me — they knew 
How from this unrespected, base-born state 
I rose, and, purposed to prevail, so dared. 
Mild Nature knew me, and I knelt to none 
Of earth or stars to cry my substance forth 
In her recording eyes. How rent I then 
The lust-yoke that enslaved me to men's ways, 
And all the sensual reins and leagues with 

Vice — 
How broke I forth from these, and plunged 

up, up. 
Through the star-ridden deeps that bared their 

breasts 
Unto my touch of wonder and resolve ! 
How from my kindreds' bier I turned away, 
Wondering if they knew me now ; and if 
By this sweet metamorphosis of heaven. 
Death had not ope'd their eyes to read aright 
My undisclosing ways, and bow my creed 
In honor for its purposed earnestness 



A Monologue 210 

If for no vaster import. Thus, thus I pressed 
My prayerful steps through my first father's 

halls 
Rich in magnificence— since Nature now 
Was home, and hearth, and comforter— still 

straying 
Where'er the touch of Love hath changed to 

music 
The children of the elements,— the woods 
The snow-embalmed peaks and mitred vales, 
The sea-republic and the cloistered stars, 
And the divining, benedictive Night 
Whisp'ring with subtilest speech : ' Take faith, 

O Prophet !— 
The Morrow shall bend down, and from thy lips 
Drink all thy sovereign spirit's bursting forth. 
And honor thee thy prayer ! ' Yet Morrow 

came 
All willing ears ; and still for language-lack, 
I was unheard, unknown. And each on each 
Was hoarded slave-like in the sullen past — 
Reproachful Yesterdays that mocked my prayer. 

* Is this the heritage of heaven ?' I cried, 

* A soul sheathed up in some dry husk where 

now 
The steel that Truth hath tempered fit for wars 
For some celestial chiefdom, rusts within 
This calloused, carrion mask of sordid ashes ? 
Ye open wounds ! are ye the recompense 



220 Zoroaster 

For so much daring toward the unseen God ? 
Ye smarting heart-throbs ! bleed ye forth the 

hours 
That match our mortal Destinies who stand 
Mocking with silence thrice more eloquent, 
These eloquent prayers ? If this be so, 
Then let me clench my palms upon this beating 
Which so profanes my days, and with one fierc 
Convincing action, rend these stubborn seals 
That bound such false assumption, prying out 
The beggar-thing of peril prisoned fast 
Within the aching void, and so to sleep, — 
Die into life that crystallizes error 
To something god-begotten on the noon — 
A somewhat beautiful that shall not perish.' 

Thus Nature ever jealous, ever true 
To that stern creed whereby men prove them- 
selves, 
Would bid us languish in her haloed look. 
Or dream upon her lap the cloud-god's dream. 
Yet be so surfeited of her caress. 
Refined speech and ocean-heaving love. 
That it were an ordeal grave yet sublime, 
To shoulder on the faith this extreme creed. 
Turning creation into thoughts, heaping 
Their bulks almighty on a frail-born babe. 
Ambition to high purpose be my curse ; 
But such a curse as proves itself with heaven, 



A Monologue 221 



And finds its cure in more ambition still. 

This life-long virtue is a god's disease 

*T were sacrilege to ease : a malady 

That all the starry leech-craft could not heal, 

Since remedy be death. 'T is as a wound 

Inflicted by our mother, or by one 

For whom we would lay down our willing lives 

Nor deem her criminal, and fallen so, 

Die martyr to the ailment we so cherish. 

Is this an incorruption in high faith : 

The sanctity of honor and the seal 

Of chief divinity, or is 't a plague 

Heaping the spirit's treasure-house with ores 

Beyond this finite province to sustain 

And mint into God's currency ? Is 't health 

In some divine assumption, or a scourge 

Which purifies erewhile, that unto me 

All things lift over-ponderous with thoughts, 

Each, mother of a panting galaxy 

Of star-dreams fervent, till tlie arc bleeds fire; 

While I walk earth as one that shoulders up 

Some meteor of heaven on my faith, 

Yet call it blessed and am silent so. 

My heart was born of flame. At my soul's 
touch 
The woods uprose a parliament of seers, 
Hoary with oracles and templed lores ; 
Each unto each with interclasping arms. 



222 Zoroaster 

Bound brother to brother in one knowledge 

grave : 
And I, poor wight of this God-yoked desire, 
Walked in their midst and opened all my heart, 
Ten thousand ears prone to their trenchant 

words — 
Words like to love-lutes on the summer seas, 
Or that stern utterance when winter winds 
Rouse them to mutiny. To my soul's eyes 
The flowers hung over-natured of their sweets. 
Till with divine intemperance they swooned, 
Embowered in their cycles, with warm brows 
Hung heavy with a golden luxury 
Of hue and form and image rare, till they 
Grew too profound for natural thought, and 

died. 
To my soul's touch the music of the sea 
When headlong winds o'er-swept it as their lyre 
Flung up the sapphired phantasy to heaven. 
An oracle espoused of virtues bold. 
Prompting their sagest stratagems, and shamed 
Old Ocean green with jealousy that Earth 
Should boast such open ears. At my soul's 

touch 
The seasons rose as epochs whence did Truth 
Map forth a new career to joy mankind ; 
Founding a new philosophy within 
The heart of thinking man till he be strong 
In self-subduing quality to reason — 



A Monologue 



fgzie 223 



A sin-child but in name. To my soul's sight 
The years were an anointed brotherhood 
That linked me closer heaven with clasped 

hands, 
And with their parting kiss bearing my prayer. 
They were the bridging Destinies that spanned 
These gulfs of doubt and death, — the mitred 

priests 
At the pale altars of the templed heart, 
Performing each their sanguine rite of love, 
Then, by the edict of supremer Will, 
Making pale off'rings of these sin-bleached 

bones, 
Gathering up the dust to call it blessed. 
Years are the praying elements, whose prayers 
In graving unity are driven up 
Beyond the sky-shores of Creation. These, 
Sweet intercessions 'twixt the foul and fair, 
Lift our libations to the topmost grace, 
Alms-suppliant of peace. At my soul's touch 
The earth and air, and the thanksgiving deeps 
Of heaven profound with secrets absolute 
And hallowed from the touch profane of men, 
Yea, all the peopled areas, God-struck 
To law rebellious save to that command, — 
These sisterhoods of virtue-proving loves. 
Wreathed of flushed amaranth — the sesame 
Of life perpetuate : these sensate truths, 
Oracular of God, no longer stand 



224 Zoroaster 

Mysterious before this able search, 

But each is sovereign of an empire rich 

In thoughts proportioned to availing arms, 

And their large issues are the god-sires all 

Of that I feel and shadow in my scripture. 

And I am thus their child — their firstling faith 

Instructed in the parent reverence, 

By brazen discipline learning the truth 

Till I am coeternal with that same 

I so exalting kissed. And last, oh God, 

Yet even nearest to that infant couch 

Whereon these aspirations ribbed of naught 

But cradling faith and futures, dreamful lie, — 

In my soul's eyes the God in all mankind — 

This the immortal wedlock of that love 

I drew down from the topmost weal of heaven, 

The musings of the Charities with souls 

They dare to edify and exercise 

Into most perfect saintship. This the art 

Interpreting the conflict faltering 

Into its true estate, beyond the wars 

Of trifiers that o'ertop the mounted suns. 

Herein am I God-sceptred to command; 

For men to me in each warm character 

Of these unshamed revealings of the heart, 

Are music made so tangible it thinks. 

And teaches me do likewise ; and with ears 

And eyes a-strain to feed my nature sway, 

I seek out each twin mote that is revealed 



A Monologtie 22? 

When the true sunshift opens on its breast 
And parts the cloud before my yearning eyes. 
Thus am I taught, and this would teach again. 
Oh God ! how much of heaven that men deem 

base — 
Crime's load-star siren to the rack of hell- 
Forever unredeemed. 

And this to me 
Is all my life stands judgment : to be true 
To that intuitive which far transcends 
The God-most reach of mind, and faithful 

proven 
To that revealed art whereby my life 
Prays Truth-ward up thus to endue mankind, 
So stand transformed a prism of the pure. 
The just, the worthy, throwing radiance 
Upon the sordid text of man's dead scriptures, 
Immortal and sustaining, till this night 
Opaque with depths misdeemed eternity. 
Lift as abiding rainbows from our sleep. 
And peace make home where now breeds bit- 
terness. 

I sought my temple on the upper peaks 
Mid the laborious airs, where call the clouds 
Their snowy sisterhoods to councils huge. 
There, purposed of this creed, I homed my heart 
To be revivified by grief in love 



226 Zoroaster 

More perfect and abiding. There to be 
By discord taught the master-seal of song ; 
By sorrow, piety ; and solitude 
To think as the wide-voicing elements 
Who stand repugnant to the trifler's arts ; 
I rear my altars where no mutiny 
Of man's tyrannic lust can mock my prayers, 
Nor mingle the malignance of the cynic 
With this divinity so God-espoused, 
And so pray on unceasingly. My poor heart 
Ascends in the oblation, prompting up 
These thoughts supine into redeemed air. 
As clouds up from the censer-vales at even, 
And there swoon back upon their element- 
Peace of all peace in like embraced of like. 
But here in this dead archive of the mount, 
I bless my habitation, such as man 
As man — oh, not as god, must home his heart ; 
And while my spirit chases starward still, 
Dragging its fiery car through the inane 
And opaque counter-whiles of Time and Tide, 
Should'ring their mountainous secrets, I remain 
Where flesh must still prevail and thirst 

appeased 
By dint of misery — my soul's god-sire. 
I call upon the forests, and with shriek 
On shriek upvoicing, dare them to the law 
That made them mighty. ' Have ye too, 

aspired ? — 



A Monologue 227 

O ye swart-ribbed, primaval seers ! and so 
Are now my proven brethren?' But thqy 

stand, 
And in dumb pity shake their milken tops, 
And'hiss: 'Thou fool !' and I am answered so. 
Then turn I from the legislative woods— 
That family of Titans, breathing life 

Into these babes of phantasy and fear 

Those kings I court, yet who feel not with me 
When I am over-weaned of headlong grief 
Supple in fool's philosophy and shame. 
And with a faith-enduing voice that tincts 
My whole wrought being with its rich applause, 
Cry to the open-eared, ambitious cloud : 

'Ye peace-born children of the matron Morn ! 
Eaves-droppers of heaven !— ye frail sister- 
hoods 
Of vestals in the frock and livery 

Of light about this mountain's skiey hearth ! 

Oh have ye not to gain this sweeping state — 
This orb-eclipsing, sky-prevailing reach 
Of beauty, from the damps of earth aspired ? 
Have ye not wrung from under-circumstance 
Your capable pitch of awe ? Have ye not rent 
The trammels of some custom trite, or law 
By knaves conjured to keep young Effort down 
In their damned midst, and cringe her lawful 
babes 



2 28 Zoroaster 

Before some tyrant effigy ? Have ye 
To kiss the zenith, paid your weight in woe, 
That from the hoar pretentions of the world, 
Ye dare stand rank amid these shelved stars! 
Speak, speak, ye bent-browed ministers ! ' 

But nay ; 
There hang they still — tlie pendant pearls that 

clasp 
The neck of heaven, changeful at the cheek 
Chameleon-like, and I am answered so. 
Then closer still I liood my mantle down 
Upon this vanquished and perturbed shape, 
And creep into my cave, housing the bowels 
Of this imperious crag, whose beetling front 
In wedged helmet midway to the moon, 
Keeps up his starry war to clinch his state 
Beyond invade of super-eminence. 
Lo ! I have found a wound upon his side, 
Gored by the horns of some behemoth foe ; 
And I have probed it even to the vitals 
Where I may list these soltmn workings still. 
Deep in this rock-ribbed heart that fires no pulse. 
And here I kneel me by my rude, rude shrine. 
Counting the throbs of Nature with sweet 

tongues 
In every beat, through the conjuring days. 
Then with a voice tuned to meek gratitude. 
In my heart's hardship, and with tenting eyes 



A Monologue 229 

Wedging the solemn mountain-bulk beyond 
I pray: 

*0 thou. that dost so solemnize 
The ordinance of Nature in thy pale 
Dead cerements of ages ! — chief of all 
These vaulting boasts that pedestal the earth ! 
Yearn ye with thoughts that I too may not 

think ?— 
Feelings beyond the compass of my vein — 
Tragedies that I may not act again 
In travail to like precedence, — on, on, 
Through the upbattling ranks of things that 

browse 
The unrepentant sods ? Can ye not list 
These heart-throbs snatching reason e'en from 

hell 
To slave them in their purpose, and be made 
A consecration to my leaping thought. 
As I unto that all-preceding Will 
Which wrenched you from mal-shapen dross 

and heaved 
Your pale tiaras to the vested stars ? — 
Call me by name, and by the virgin truth. 
Thy mountain-sired son ? Oh part ye now 
The avenues into that secret nave 
Wherein is locked thy vantage-seal of triumph. 
And let me cast my oittern self thereon 
In one enshrinement purposed to endure, 



230 Zoroaster 

O Truth ! thy right-armed Doer still for aye.* 

But on this tide of emulative zeal 
And bowed humility, in stubborn war 
To pry the secret from the rugged ribs 
That bound his triumph, the staid Morn-god 

lifts 
E'en from his infirm sleep, shaking his 'locks 
In scorn-beard passion, and I kneel me meek 
At his huge coucli, bleeding as bleed the 

Hours 
That hang as curses on the neck of Jove. 
God seals the pearl of Triumph : the great law 
Of life is but the laboring toward that law 
Which but of heaven becomes our heritage. 
True aspiration is its own sweet meed, 
And toil in toil finds the chief victory. 
We strive for that we dare not take to heart 
When at the last 't is safe within our reach ; 
But ever push it onward, calling down 
Peril, disaster, darkness in the rift 
Betwixt the gloating eyes and all it would. 
To prove the hero greater than the victor — 
The martyr, god ; the conqueror mere man. 

Once in my youth, long, long ago — for now 
Though scarce a greybeard, I have truthwise 

grown 
By grave experiance a patriarch 
In charity that bows sweet kin to heaven— 



A Monologue 231 

I had a- brother whose unconscious soul 
Threw such a radiance on mortality, 
'T was like the twilight on a leaden cloud 
Falling, with benedictivc kiss of peace 
Transforming it to triumph, light, and joy. 
His coming was like rain to th' parching flowers 
That swooned on th* vital noon with swollen 

lips — 
The brave incarnate answering of heaven 
To prayers for heroes to deliver Truth 
From th' trifler's sophistry. He died ; and death 
Came as a dream to some entranced sleeper, 
To me transforming the strange Why of life 
To wonder-oracles, grave, meaningful, 
Austere and new, and my sick soul was dumb. 
Yet in that oracle where I iiad read 
More of my days' allegiance to their oath 
Than my meek life gave argument, I found 
My true, my second and unsolved self 
In one all-chief resolve to do and be. 
That friend a new religion taught my days ; 
A creed graver than lip-worsliip, — a speech 
That joy, and shame, and hope, and grief, 

aye, all 
Rebellious the yearning lip, out-wits not 
In travail to be free, — speech that out-acts 
The pitch of words set in their stubborn teeth. 
Silent as symbols to the tender ears. 
The elders of the legislative Morn 



232 Zoroaster 

And Even penitent, — these heard and honored. 
By this rich, mutual language was I brought 
So face to face with pioneering Law, 
That in these border parallels of Truth 
I was commutual ; aye, though but youth — 
A simple cliild of child's unsifted whims 
Built for expansion by grave exercise 
Of judgment, reason, and presiding worth. 
I read mucli but I pondered more ; 
Resolving by the simplest threads of thought. 
That to the mind of impress clean and clear. 
All things find argument in Nature first ; 
Books are mere second sight. Therefore, I read 
But as a principle that seeks its own, 
And but with principles will take up friend, 
Housed with the few — but the almighty few. 
Reading merely for the reading's sake, 
Infuses mental leprosy wliich gnaws 
That subtile gossamer tentioned profound, 
Which catches the vibrations of the still 
Swift voice that but the list'ning prophet hears. 
Like meteor, I read the Milky Way 
Of booklore, snatching and absorbing deep 
Within me, spirit, mood, proclivities, 
Rather than meedless matter and stone wit; 
Sapping each fruit of all its prodigal soul, 
Kissing the husk with thanks. Each infused 
Their individual element of virtue. 
The carrion bulk of that I harvested 



A Monologue 233 

I threw into the pits, since I had brewed 
From their sweet excellence that potion rich 
Which so avails me now, and which, in turn, 
'T is mine to mint to modern medium — 
New current of these antique ores of ages. 
Mid these refined arts — these embryon 
Cogent by reason of their leverage 
On Nature's seal unbroken, I was king, 
Demanding light from darkness obdurate. 
Till from the East an advent sun uplifts 
In answering attributes. And thus to me 
To be alone was to be best companioned. 
I never found a friend so great, so true 
As one brave, kingly, solitary thought. 
To be alone was to be banqueted 
By the god-thoughts that cringe no alms of men, 
Nor kiss their trip condition. Thus if I 
By right forsook men at their feasting pomps, 
'T was but to prove how greater far the gods 
Respect man even in his follies yoked, 
Than man respects himself. 

But now, alas. 
The threading dream grows slender, and these 

still. 
Swift thoughts are flagging in their latitudes, 
Bidding me from the temple where this rite 
Hath been performed devoutly to my cause. 
Lo ! I must to the peaks, and by the hour 



234 Zoroaster 

When the primeval sun shall rise and meet 
Its worshipper upon that wholesome seat, 
Then shall I pray to be new-reigned of faith, 
And press God's token firmer. So, adieu ! — 
Thou city of great dreams, where hate, nor 

lust. 
Nor aught of the unclean-born can prevail. 
Adieu ! and thou the guardian at the gates 
Of every castled Honesty, arise. 
And press these keys unto thy fervent lips, 
Sealing from aught profane this holy place 
Wherein I kneel and Truth there names me 

* God-child!' 



A Monologue 53^ 



^ifXO<H9\tV X 



BOOK SECOND. 



Ambition is the mind's eternal youth ; 
And to pure purpose 't is the vestal oil 
That keeps the altar-flame upon the heart 
A faith-star through the dim beniglited years. 
Let not this nurse of states die like pale whims 
Upon the brow of the young Palmer ; nay, 
By brawn assault and arts most equal matched, 
Wring citadels from sly rebellious Time, 
And change them into sanctuaries all. 
Each honest purpose is a consecrate 
And vested temple of divine To-be ; 
And brave thoughts are the priests that should 

abide — 
Bowed rites of chastity and armored trust 
Forged error-proof for mastership eterne. 



236 Zoroaster 

The seal is on my heart, and I have sworn 
To an oblation by the early sun ; 
So, passive to this charge, have whipped me on 
O'er mobled crag and heap laborious 
Of stony gods swooned back on flattered Chaos, 
On, up from earth into this peerest pitch — 
High o'er the wrecks of earthquake violence 
Ragged, convulsion-rent in impious rage 
Confounded to the pits, — fierce fragments 

strewn 
Of Nature's firstling heart. Here have I toiled 
To press my couch of prayer where nearest 

heaven 
These phantasies may bridge more fervently 
The reach 'twixt faith and all it honors so. 
And thou, O lifting Monitor of eld ! — 
Seer of Creation's creed, who from the East 
Hath made one sweet religion of the world — 
A faith whose rite is Beauty and the True — 
Sun of all suns! discourse thou to my soul, 
And ye unsandaled, reverend crags ! give ear. 

Thou heaven-shouldering Orb of life and 
light !— 
Peace ! let me learn thy sainted Mother's name. 
Astride art thou the pitch of sovereignly, 
The rainbowed hearth of the partaking stars, — 
Umpire of all archatigel reasoning 
That doth profound the planets ! thus my hand 



A Monologue ^37 

Stretches forth over tidal seas, benight 
Of dumb mortality, but thou art there ! 
Ah ! who of earth hath dreamt that at one Voice 
This pulse that mutinies the throbbing space 
Reeling with moons and galley-slaving stars- 
Fair dominitions pendant in the breach — 
At one great Hest these orbit-chasing worlds 
Halt in their pilgrimage and hood their brows, 
And this o'er-pompous effigy of heaven 
We dare call * Earth, ' and Nature naked-palmed, 
And Power and Purpose and the fertile womb 
Of Space primordial,— all unsandaled stand 
In this tranfixed and eternal noon, 
Therein one brotherhood are bowed and dumb, 
While One still greater tasks them of their day. 
The generations pass but in my hand 
Lay all their fallen seals, and snail them down 
Through the swift Shades black-forged of eager 

Death, 
Impalpable e'en to a bane-god's touch ! 
Then up from clenched vaults of steeded suns, 
Rise forth the children of Creation— they 
Who exorcise the fiended Night, and take 
These forest-numbering seasons by the hand 
Pointing their task and toil, and from these 

strewn 
And broken fragments of the mortal war— 
The fouled annihilation of the fair- 
Lift forth a purpose and a thing availing. 



238 Zoroaster 

The twilight harp doth vibrate to thy nod, — 
Thou light-anointed vigil of the years ! 
The vales are censers and the stubborn breath 
Ascends up from the blue depths yearningly, 
And each pale atom in the frosten eve — 
Each prayerful fairy- world of lifting dew, 
Crowds round its hearth a household of sweet 

dreams 
Love-lifted into lovliness. By this 
Supreme enforcement, even so my heart 
Lifts forth its penitence, and hails thee so; 
Compels from shapeless night liymeneal Morn, 
Cliarging the heart the seal of never-sleep. 

The sun is forth from the cloud-peopled 
East- 
Out of his urn where for a tliousand years 
Methinks he hath been castled, and that night 
Which on my life hath marked an era led 
Forth from Ambition's epoch, ebbs away. 
As if the breath of anarchy iiung spent 
In the envenomed air. Once more pale Earth 
So babe-like cribbed upon tlie purple Morn, 
Stands augury and bids me to my task — 
This God-rite virtual manifest herein. 

Hail ! offspring of the plentitude of heaven — 
First-born of Eld, in aerial empires cribbed, 
And by t)iy equal godship proven thrice 



A Monologue 239 

Commutual with th' one ascendant Soul 
That feeds the days and years their spiritual 

breath, 
And Progress with sweet weal ! Abide with me, 
And let thy mutual lamp of mellow oils 
Illume tjie purport of these lifting steps. 
Oh, thou most grave resolved as witness-chief 
Of all that perishes and from decay 
Invokes Eternity ! if I am wrong 
In vaunting to be heard in this mad war 
Of Change impetuous and headlong plunge 
Of Progress to its pitch ; if I may boast 
A voice that penetrates, 'mid volt on volt 
Of the unbridled circumstance, the heart 
Of this material creed of days and deeds : 
If I, like famished wolf invoking moons. 
Stand at the capitol and touch the heavens 
With unrebeliious dare, — oh, hear my vow ! 
And take these sheaves of harvest penitence, 
Leaving my open palms to argue forth 
From Night some virtual love, from Day some 

law. 
Waging still starward with a certain meed 
In self-rewarding excellence of effort. 

I walked the earth the shadow of a god 
Who in high realms amiss, was hither cast 
To do some blood-rheum penance, high re- 
solved — 



^40 ZoroasieV 

Some sufferance in hectic expiation 
For crime thought forth upon the craving arc, 
By devils labored and by Iiell given stage 
In impious tragedy. The sons of men, 
Named me their prophet as a teemless trope 
Or plaything with the counter-seal of liell 
Upon its birth-rank. I was crossed and toiled 
By every shape that bore the brand of error 
Upon its brazen temple, and was flung 
Into the midst of Crime-dogs browed of shame 
That feeds on Innocence. Experiance 
Instilled its world of malice, — brackish cup, 
And scorn sly-slippered as the witted fiends, 
Thrusting me to the forests to abide 
As one that lost liis kinship unto men, 
And sought that amply proven to the gods. 
I was a twilight pilgrim through the night 
Of aspen commonality — this stretch 
Of sordid gain by gamesters confiscate. 
Lamped by one sorry torch to lead the blind, 
I labored on and on, and grew to think 
These hardened retributions of the gods 
Upon this slave mortality not all 
The vow to heaven called 'life.' I learned to 

look 
Upon the tragic discord of this state 
With eyes untranced of sanguine-lipped ro- 
mance ; 
But like some ministration of good cheer. 



A Monologue 241 

I folded meekly o'er these crimson fields 

Of spectral-armed debauch, a certain touch 

Of the absolving graces all-redeeming. 

In my faith-humbled and all-conquered heart 

I found more true religion than in creeds ; 

By solitude more manifest, the truth, 

Rather than 'mid tlie murmurings of men. 

And so I labored and so labor now. 

Ever forever upward, onward still 

Into the peerest climax of the rift 

Through which all heaven smiles ; and by this 

skill 
Made bold to kindle on the offended breach 
In nature some most adequate avail — 
Some quality of love yet undisclosed. 

Now must I lay me low, and on this heap 
Of reeds rude-plaited take my dreamless 

draught. 
This poor old ruin of a stalwart pride — 
This ledge of reason which breaks abruptly 
Where the abyss beneath is night and death, — 
This riven brow fretted of dead men's wrongs 
And the forgetfulness of living loves — 
Now Nature doth requite in kindly sleep. 

A young and fervent voice up from the 
deeps — 
More like the passing of a silver cloud 



242 Zoroaster 

Before the pensive moon, awakens me ; 
The keen air now grows tremulous with words 
I feel yet hear not, so soft-voiced are they. 
Ye reeling altitudes of form and feature 
Immeasurably parted on my sight! — 
How beautiful are ye ! I kiss my chains 
Kneeling with thanks before the tyrant rod 
That makes so sweet and fond a serf of me. 
And now that voice hath grown articulate. 
Pale, trunkless phantoms pass — weird min- 

isterings 
Beckoned on sleep from dawn-day increate. 
And now take they a subtiler phase — these 

calm 
Fair voicings of Almighty wish and weal — 
Empyrean law in godlike discourse bound. 
My heart 's aflame ; lo ! forth from the dead urn 
Of this sin-knotted, grave mortality 
I am led forth into the ampler air, 
Propicious browed, of this new reason lamped: 

* The moments are the pearls that bead the 

neck 
Of the all-peerless Jove : they fall from heaven, 
That angels and the sons men may make 
An equal harvest. Thus to thy exacting God 
Thy life is matched with angels to like 

purport.' 



A Monologue 243 



* Eternity cribs Heaven and Earth in one 
God-teemfiil Infinite. All bound within 
This orbed circle of divine emprise 

Bears mutual relation ; and the zones 

That gird these arcs in like resources matched. 

* Boast not of wisdom ; for thy utmost wit 
Spans but a mote. All, all beyond, before : 
The veil is not yet lifted — thou art blind. 
Death only is the prism of the truth 

That cuts the incorporate void, and proves the 

core 
Brimming with rainbows promiseful of peace. 
Hence, fear not death ; it is the oracle.' 

* Law points the orbits of the spheried stars, 
And to this ordination are they fixed. 

Ye are like bondsmen to thy laws of being : 
Abide ye in their best, and they in you.' 

*An angel's moment is a man's made sure ; 
The world hath need of thee, or thou wert yet 
With darkness increate. Fulfil thy oath : 
This stern birth obligation, for 't is writ 
In God's sure language in thy mother's blood: 
Respect it, oh, respect it. Son of Truth ! ' 

*Work thou hast scorned undone, no man 
shall do ; 



244 Zoroaster 

What gods leave unperformed no gods pro- 
ceed. 
E'en angels by their labors are made chief.' 

* Thy soul is upward-arrowed from the grave; 
The spent bow falls, and never shall it speed 
Another arrow to another heaven. 
Therefore, attain thy soul's majority ; 

Thou shalt not here return to flatter wrong 
Into avail, or with a suppliant kiss 
Right thy frail-armed offense, for these stand 
sealed.' 

* The sun arms thee thy power ; the night 

gives rest ; 
The earth, thy couch ; the stars, thy coverlet. 
They all are portions of that brotherhood 
Of which thou art a link. Repute them not 
With crime ; for these ascribing elements 
Breathe wrath ; and they may turn to scourges 

swift 
Upon thy reptile ways and wring the shame.* 

* A star runs rebel to its law : it falls ; 
A tree repugnant to its office, dies ; 
The armored days of duty unfulfilled. 
Yoked with a curse, stand coward at the 

breach 
Upon the God's expectancy. A man 



A Monologue 245 

But snails his duty, his delinquent soul 
Into damnation withers to the hilt.* 

* The Whirlwinds flag not ; 't is their charge 

to pass ; 
The Seasons stay not : 't is their death to halt ; 
The Hours— they slumber not ; and man's 

great heart 
Here pendulums the still eternity : 
Each stroke is numbered— it must be fulfilled.' 

' Tis gone, and as the music of the gods. 
Making sweet war on the pulsating whiles, 

Leaves a celestial wake. Up, up, my spirit ! 

Thou wert of a snail mock-parented. 
To paint thy powers on the rut-ridden dusts. 
Up, up, and let the gates of high applause 
Swing wide upon thee, nor let viprous scorn, 
Nor bisson hate, nor malice scorpion-clawed 
Swerve thee from thy preoption proved elect. 

The tempests are thy scourgers till by scourge 
Right-handed abler thou hast clenched and 

flung 
Their furies to the wastes,— lo ! then they serve. 
The elements turn rebel till by thrice 
More keen philosophy and brawnier blade, 
Thou hast made slaves of them,— lo ! then they 
serve. 



246 Zoroaster 

The mitred Night, thy ancient pillory, — 
Thy first traducer, and the iron heel 
On battered Fortune, else sweet as success : 
Till by thy lash of light thou hast whipped 

down 
This scourge impenitent, and seen the blush 
Of conscious shame upon the early East — 
And then she serves. And thus all attributes 
And laws of human or of heaven perforce, 
Which at the vital onset seem to bear 
Withholding resource to thy arm, and pass 
Mock judgment on thy cynic cavilers, — 
To bribe thy pilot and beshrew thy cause, 
Turn and befriend him whose respect they have. 
The tears of bowed mankind make brackish all 
The nectars of the gods that rain to earth. 
In which we are baptised. But there are they 
Who by a sovereign alchemy at heart. 
Do crystallize these tears to pearls of price. 
Till these usurping griefs are Godwise changed 
To offices of beauty, valiance, love — 
Matched for a star-bride's coronation. Yea, 
This is a brief-dawn while, but one of purpose, 
Save to the grasped groat, or th' lust-blind 

babes 
In second weaning from the pap of wolves ; 
And that brave resource lifts its wholesome rule 
From the within ; and if 't is proven not, 



A Monologue 247 

Nature is shamed, and Truth knows one more 
sorrow. 

Peace ! the swift orbs are swimming in 
amaze, 
And darkness is made mortal througliout all 
The poison cores ot hate, and Love now lives. 
Oh ye divine-voiced, crystal-hearted things 
Cynics misdeemed the star-mists of the mind: 
Sweet rhapsodies of mellow offering 
To heaven, — sons of wisdom opulence 
Out-armed by no angel breadth of doing ! — 

Nature, so remembering to them 

Who have thee done slight honor in the deed 
By quickened faith so bold of zealous will I'- 
ve Time-seers born of the Undreamed, — 

Unkown ! — 
Who, bald of passion for a fool's applause. 
Vaunting no excellence, mete out your dogged 
And most repugnant offices ! — Ye sweet 
And virgin Triumphs, with God-kissing eyes 
Sounding the measure of my poor dead heart, 
With sylvan cheer upon your tempering 

brows — 

1 am your palmer hence ! — your lover made 
By these antagonists of scorn-bred eyes. 

And tongues that swear down hatred in my 

path. 
More ardently a prophet in my quest. 



248 Zoroaster 

Thou Master-art of heaven ! henceforth am I 
The flagon-bearer of thy operant wine 
Love-tinct with th' kiss of purity at the brim. 
And thou, my soul! uplift like vermeil dews 
In th' gladdest morntide of thy sovereign will, 
Leaving no trace save on the viprous air 
A freshness, and on Nature reverent still 
A forward memory of all thy deeds. 

Swing back, ye cavern gates ! grim sentinels 
Rock-browed in silence, — part ! Lo, thou 

sweet air 
Kissing these salt-washed cheeks of all disease 
And black carnality ! — O Earth, and all 
Thy gladdened household urgent to this cause 
Wherein I may prove great to prove men 

greater — 
Hail ye your prophet, lo ! to thy embrace 
I leap from my dead cradle — a new Day, 
New Nature, and new Heaven — these now are 

mine, 
Sworn deep into this valor-teemed soul, 
And I am gone — thus, forth — and I am gone ! 



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